Star Wars: The Skywalker Heresy Episode II: Forces of Rebellion
by trekaddict
Summary: Ten months after the events of Episode I, things have settled down somewhat. The Jedi and their Republic Navy allies have taken to raiding convoys on the edges of settled space while they search for a permanent base. Palpatine believes he has found a suitable apprentice, while others try to find the Jedi Order and Padmé Amidala, both said to be dead. T-rated, second in the verse.
1. Chapter 1

**STAR WARS  
>THE SKYWALKER HERESY<strong>  
><strong><br>EPISODE II**

**FORCES OF REBELLION**

Ten months have passed since the rise of the New Order, and Palpatine's Galactic Empire asserts it's authority over a still restive Galaxy. Darth Sidious, in his persona as Emperor Palpatine, has been hunting down those Jedi that did not take part in the Exodus, but still has not found a suitable apprentice to replace what was supposed to have been Darth Vader.

All over Imperial Space, his fleet is asserting his authority with an iron fist, and already many systems feel the weight of his tyranny. But not all is lost. Republic loyalists, CIS remnants and a myriad of other groups tentatively start the long, bitter and dangerous fight against the evil Empire.

On Coruscant the Imperial Senate does what Emperor Palpatine wishes it to, but even here there are those who dare to quietly oppose him. Rumours from the edges of the Unknown Regions have come to their ears...

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 1<strong>

The Hyperspace lanes along had never been particularly safe, even during the days when the Old Republic had itself still been new. In the Unknown Regions all sorts of threats only waited for either naïve of stupid merchants to use this one on their own, and during the War, the Separatists had often raided around here, using Droid ships and fighters that didn't need much in the way of base infrastructure. Now though, with the Imperial Navy using the plethora of ex-Republic ships that were now more or less surplus providing convoy escort, the run was more than a little boring, especially for a small, "low-priority" shipment such as that of Convoy IF-247/T to one of the many Imperial outposts and listening stations along the edges of known space.

At the same time most of the crews aboard the six freighters and two escorting frigates were glad that they were here, doing a boring supply run instead of fighting against ultimately doomed but still suicidally fanatic CIS remnants or, and that would have been worse, be in on the rumoured hunts for fugitive Jedi. Most of the crews for these ships had come from worlds that hadn't seen anything of the Clone Wars, and therefore no Jedi, so were far more inclined to believe Imperial propaganda about them than someone from the core worlds or even Coruscant itself.

Lieutenant-Commander Trun hailed from Coruscant, he and his wife both stemmed from long lines of civil servants, and she still worked for one of the Senators, so he didn't assume that everything the HoloNet said was true. At the same time he didn't really care either way, and knew that it was healthier in so many ways to do as one was told. As captain of the DC-20 frigate he was, thankfully, not senior officer of the escort, since that would have required him to actually pay attention to what was going on around them and still be bored to tears. No, what really annoyed him was that he didn't even know exactly what was on board.

"Captain, we have something on the short-range scanners, coming out of that nebula cloud 299.212-44."

"Identification?"

"Not sure yet, Sir. The nebula obscures our scopes."

Trun didn't bother asking if the Flagship had reacted, because that particular officer was an clumsy fool. The very reason that this convoy was escorted was because over the last few weeks several convoys had disappeared in this area.

He cursed Sector Command for sending such a small escort, but he knew that the uprising on Ma'acus wasn't that far back and they would need any larger ships until the pacification efforts were complete.

"Battle stations."

"Yes, Sir."

Trun glanced at the sensor display and was enraged when he saw that _Turbulent_ still hadn't launched the six V-19s she carried. When you crossed a system like this on sublight then it should be... no, it _was_ standard procedure to launch one's fighters, but it seemed that Captain Ort knew better. Again.

However, it was then that Trun was proven right. His DP-20 frigate was to the rear of the convoy, and and coming out from within an Asteroid field, six starfighters attacked him from the rear. Of course only one of his turbolasers could train that way, and none of his concussion missile launchers.

He used one of the visual scanners to look at his opponents. Two ETA-2s, the rest were Delta-7Bs. Much to his surprise, both the ETA-2s fire one concussion missile each, and before they impacted on his aft shields, he managed to realize that they must have been extensively modified. After that he was too busy trying not to fall over as the two missiles impacted into and obliterated his aft deflector shields. Most of the fighters veered off, but one of them began to pepper his aft section, and most importantly, his engines with blue laser fire, taking care to stay out of the aft turret's firing arc.

An explosion rocked the ship and the lights flickered.

"Captain, the main engines are down." someone supplied, not realizing how pointless that report was. Then again, he couldn't know that main power would fail next. The lights went to emergency red and she shuddered to a halt, clearly out of the fight for the moment. Most of the external sensors still worked, being run off emergency power, but those batteries couldn't supply enough for weapons, shields, never mind the hyperdrive or sublight engines even if those had still been working. All they could do was watch.

And what they could watch.

The enemy ship was a capital one, in fact it seemed to be a Victory-Class Star Destroyer in Old Republic colours, and he realized that it probably was the one he'd heard stories about before setting off for this forsaken corner of the galaxy. He had to give it to Ort, at least he tried.

The larger frigate launched all twelve of her fighters, but since this was a low-priority sector, at least it was right now, those weren't flown by clones but by volunteers from one of the local worlds that had proven it's loyalties, first to the Republic and now to the Empire. That they had sent their 'best' didn't exactly fill him with confidence, he'd been a tactical officer during the Battle of Coruscant and he'd seen how real soldiers fought.

Still, the V-19 formed up and headed towards the Jedi fighters, while _Turbulent_ interposed herself between the convoy and the Star Destroyer. The freighters ran for the edge of the massive gravity well that existed in this system. Ort was a fool for going through instead of around this known navigation hazard.

The volume of fire the Rebel Star Destroyer put out was frightening, evidently they had managed to keep her in good repair. The frigate replied as well as she could, but it was no comparison. Shot after shot of blue energy impacted on _Turbulent_'s shields, battering them down one after another, while the Star Destroyer could easily shrug it off, having been made to slug it out with ships it's own size.

Meanwhile the fighter battle was not going well for the Empire. The pilots from the local backwaters were up against Clone Wars veterans, and it showed. Even though they were outnumbered, the Rebels flew as if they weren't, and he could see how the two ETA-2s, one Orange-white and the other Yellow-white, supported one another and quickly began racking up the kills. The last V-19 died when the orange one exploded it with a single expert shot. Whoever flew that one had to be very, very good.

The fighters then formed up again, and he saw that the Rebels had lost no one, except for two that seemed to be damaged, and one of them quite badly by the way he was leaking fuel, but they were all there, the damaged ones shortly breaking off and heading out of the immediate battle area, the remaining D-7Bs running down transports. Meanwhile the two ETA-2s lined up the aft section of _Turbulent_, ignored the inaccurate laserfire around them and collapsed her weakened rear shields with the impacts, before peppering the engines just like they had done with his own ship.

Unlike a D-20, C-Class ships were more heavily armoured, but even a Star Destroyer couldn't have taken this sort of punishment forever as the two fighters strafed the ship again and again for minutes before standing off. By then _Turbulent_ had lost most of her weapons and the sublight engines seemed to be heavily damaged. The Star Destroyer kept her cannons on the frigate while the two fighters assumed a high cover position relative to the plane of movement of the convoy.

His own transmitters were damaged, but as it turned out, he could receive just fine.

_"This is General Skywalker of the Republic Navy. Imperial ships, your escorts have been disabled, and my fighters have you in their sights. If you surrender now, you will not be harmed. Heave to and wait for my boarding parties to approach. You will not destroy or jettison cargo, or resist my boarding parties as they come onto your ships. If you comply, then we will soon be gone and you can go where you please. If not..."_

You had to hand it to Skywalker, Trun admitted to himself, he was as good a pilot as his reputation said, and he was as ruthless as Trun himself would have been in the situation.

"Captain, the convoy has stopped."

"A sensible, if deplorable choice. But at least that gives us more time to gather intelligence. I take it you are recording everything?" he asked his Sensor officer. The man knew that this was a rhetorical question, but still replied. "Yes, Sir."

Trun nodded in acknowledgement and returned to the monitor. The freighters could figure out their chances at escaping from fighters that were individually faster than them and had the help of a Star Destroyer to call on and...

"Sir, _Turbulent_ is moving!"

She was indeed. The frigate had somehow found a few tiny remnants of drive power somewhere and was now slowly, inexorably moving on a collision course with the Star Destroyer. Ort was not only a fool then, but a suicidal one.

Sure enough, the rebel ship opened fire, this time it also shot off a few of the heavy concussion missiles the Victory-Class carried. Without shields, _Turbulent_ began to shed hull plating and atmosphere like both were going out of fashion even from the heavy turbolasers, but it was the concussion missiles that did the trick. Two of them hit the narrow neck of the frigate and snapped it clean in half.

Even as the dead and dying parts of the ship began to drift away from each other, the Star Destroyer launched several shuttles, both of old Republic and CIS make, who approached the freighters under the watchful protection of their starfighters. They Rebels must have liked whatever they found in those freighters, because they then began, as he later found out, to transfer the crews from all of them to the two that carried the new water purifier for the outpost that had been the convoy's destination and took over the rest of them wholesale.

He didn't know what was on them, but they really, really _really_ liked it it seemed. They slaved the freighters systems to that of the Star Destroyer, recovered all their fighters, damaged and undamaged, as well as their shuttles before slowly making their way out of the gravity well and presumably into hyper space for a short hop at a random vector before heading to their base of operations.

Trun didn't pay them much heed after they were out of weapons range and instead commed his engineer. "Is the hyperdrive recoverable?"

_"Yes, Sir. Give me an hour and we have sublight back as well. They weren't looking to stranding us here forever."_

"Then get to it, Lieutenant."

* * *

><p>It wasn't until almost two weeks later that Trun was able to leave the Sector Command Station. He and his crew had been cleared of any wrongdoing, in no little part due to their sensor recordings and Trun's inate ability to talk faster than most people, but he knew that this would still hang over his career for a very long time. Because of that he had taken the transfer to the Coruscant Space Traffic Control Centre without much deliberation. For one, it was, while less prestigious, at least not as boring as running convoys, since there was always something going on in the beating heart of the Empire, second, and more importantly, he could live with his wife and his daughter instead of only seeing them once every month or so, as it had been for most of the last year.<p>

His wife had been ecstatic and had opted to meet him when his shuttle landed. So of course he looked out for her when he stepped of the arrival platform and into the bustle of people he looked out for his wife's tell-tale black head of hair.

"Father!"

That worked too.

He turned just in time to see a four year old whirlwind of a child run around and through the throngs of people right into his arms, his wife right behind.

"I picked her up from school. Tomorrow is off, and it's a special occasion. The teacher understood. So we thought we'd pick you up, and I'd let her escort you home before I go back to the office." she said as a way of a greeting.

He kissed her in reply, ignoring his daughter's protestations and the looks from the passers by they were getting.

"So, have you been given a new assignment yet?" his wife asked.

"Yes, STC for the next eighteen months, Varan, my love."

"Is it because..." she trailed off. Her had told her as much about the ambush as he could but they both knew that sharing this with their daughter was wrong.

"Yes, unfortunately." he replied with a sigh. "But at least it's here and not on the Hutt border, and here with the two of you."

They walked off into the crowd, in the general direction of the Senate District, only stopping to buy a bite to eat in a small shop near the _Strikefast_ memorial. As they walked, with their daughter distracted by her food, he told her the things about the attack that he hadn't trusted to the HoloNet.

"I'm glad that I don't have to go out there again soon, because this will come to the Emperor's ears, and he will want revenge. So instead of being out there, hunting pirates and getting my head shot off, and instead go home after shift and spend my weekends with the two of you." he said with a smile.

"Unfortunately you will have to wait a bit for happy family times, my beloved husband. I have to go back to work." Varan replied, and patted her daughter on the head. She gave her husband a kiss on the cheek, and they said their goodbyes. While she waited for the next skybus to the Senate District, she watched a man in an Imperial Fleet uniform walk away with a small girl chatting to him like their was no tomorrow, and she smiled.

Twenty minutes later she walked through the employee entrance of the Senate and up to Senator Organa's office. Most of the human worlds could, and did, bring on personnel from their worlds, but some, such as Naboo and Alderaan, tended to hire locals. Together with her predecessor's leaving due to what the Senator had termed a 'better offer' in the Imperial Security Bureau, there now was a Coruscanti being Chief of Staff for the Senator representing Alderaan.

She had worked for him for several months now, and in that time she had learned that her boss was nothing if not someone who would always see anything pertaining to his work important. When she had first gone to Alderaan with him and met his wife, she#d been struck by the sense of purpose that he still seemed to have. Even though she knew better than to ever say this, she knew that many Senators only held onto their jobs because they wanted to keep at least one tiny shred of power out of Palpatine's hands, and to do that the Senate needed to be around, and to be around, the Senate needed to be useful to the Empire.

In the end though this was not her concern, and right now Varan Trun was busy trying to get into her office. She mis-typed her access code twice, but after all, who had been the one to insist that she needed a new one?

"So, I take it everything went well?"

Organa's voice came from the door that led to his own office, and she turned, nodding.

"Oh yes, Sir. My husband has taken our daughter home, and I already fear what those two will have cooked up by the time I get home."

Organa smiled whistfully. He and his wife wanted children of their own, but it seemed that fate had chosen another path for them.

"Well, let us have a look at the security reports on the Alderaani trade lanes like we discussed and then we shut things down here for today."

"Yes, Sir." she said, enthusiasm evident.

She had half-turned and then thought what her husband had told her. Technically it was none of Organa's business, but she knew from the report they were going to discuss in preparation for a speech he was going to make in front of the Alderaani assembly next month and there had been a few Alderaani freighters among those raided in the last few attacks. So went into her office, collected the report from her desk and crossed the reception area to the Senator's office directly opposite her own without even looking at the droid behind the desk.

"So, what happened?" the Senator asked once they were behind closed doors and he had, unknown to her, surreptitiously made sure that they were not being eavesdropped on. Everyone in the Delegation of 2000 knew that their offices were likely bugged, and that in spite of their measures they had to be very, very careful, which was why they had decided to bide their time after the death of Senator Amidala in what the authorities claimed to have been accidental crossfire. Still, if need be he would could truthfully claim that he had acted in good faith, assuming that nothing of what she told him was any sort of secret. He doubted it would be and he would hate to throw his Chief of Staff under the hover-bus, but self-preservation was the first order of business until he had figured out all the ways of how the Empire worked. At least he would make sure that her family was taken care of if the worst thing happened.

"Mrs. Trun, if you don't want to or can't tell me..."

She shook her head. "No, it's all right. My husband said that he was told that this isn't exactly secret. Besides," she glanced at her datareader, "it seems the attack on the convoy is pertaining to our work. They used one of ours to release the crew once they'd stripped off the cargo. The _Starlight Express_."

"Any idea who was behind this?"

"My husband wouldn't tell me. When I asked he said that that part was classified."

Organa ticked off a point from his mental checklist. The pattern was that if Imperial authorities refused classified the identity of 'pirates' that raided a convoy then it was a good indicator that it wasn't the endemic raiders that plagued the fringes of civilized space since the invention of hyperdrive but indicated Rebel activity. Many of the groups that were springing up did not survive long enough to make an impact, and there were still too many who were simply happy to credit the Empire for ending the war and live under it. But some were run by beings who knew what was at stake and who knew what they had to do to survive.

"Well, that is only proper. After all, loose lips cost ships. Were there many casualties?"

"Not very. On the escorts of course, but the pirates didn't shoot any of the civilians apparently."

Of course what the Empire would end up claiming for public consumption was something else entirely, though neither were stupid enough to say that out loud. It was another check.

"I see. So, that report..."

They turned to discussing the report, unspoken agreement saying that they'd pushed the envelope enough, and when she left thirty minutes later, Organa was torn. On one hand, he really wanted to believe those rumours he'd heard from various respectable and very loyal Alderaani traders, beings he knew he could trust about their feelings towards the Empire. He wanted those rumours to be true, desperately so. Intellectually, he knew that at least part of it was true. By inferrence, this gave the other parts some weight. He really wanted Padmé Amidala to be alive. Not only because she was a friend and political ally but also for her family's sake.

All he knew was that some of the staff at 500 Republica claimed that they had seen her fleeing the building in company with a young Togrutan girl on the security recordings before the CSF had seized them, and that said girl had been carrying a lightsabre. It was circumstantial, it was thin, it was the only thing he had. One other person knew of his efforts.

Mon Mothma had been present as well when, at the 'suggestion' of the Empperor, successive services had been held in Amidala's memory both in the Senate and on Naboo. When on her homeworld, both he and Mothma had tried to speak to her parents, but they had refused to speak to anyone, be it Senators or HoloNet reporters. Whatever inquieries both had dared to make had led nowhere, they hadn't even been able to confirm that she had been pregnant at the time of her disappearance. That fact, if true, opened up a whole other raft of questions, and Bail Organa was someone who hated those.

Though if he was to be honest with himself, there were only a few things he could do, and he would not use the Senate's infrastructure for any of them. That decided, he rose to his feet and left the Senate. Anyone who watched him would think that he was calling it a day a bit earlier than normal, but would not think much of it, as he had worked late for most of the last week.

But far from it. He was going to take action.

**tbc**

**So, here we go. The first chapter of Forces of Rebellion. Now featuring a title crawl. Admittedly, I forgot posting the one from Episode I. If there's interest, I can put it into an AN some time.  
><strong>

** I hope you like it. That being said, I have written Chapter 8 of this already. I post here as I finish them, i.e. when I finish Chapter 9, you get Chapter 2.**


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

"Are you certain?"

To anyone looking in from the outside they were the picture of two Senators having a working lunch that was of a higher grade than what was provided by the Senate kitchens, in a restaurant that catered to those of the planet's inhabitants that had the means to come here and afford cuisine that contained delicacies from all over the core worlds. Nowadays this meant the upper five percent of wealthy humans. And of course anyone within the Imperial Bureaucracy, mostly because Emperor Palpatine had once frequented the restaurant many years before, before even the Clone War when he had been Senator for Naboo.

What no one but them could have expected was that the constant murmur caused by the Empire's elite and those that wished to be part of it rendered every recording device that was possibly hidden in the vast expanse of the dining hall useless, which was why Mon Mothma had suggested this venue for today's conspiratorial meeting.

"As certain as you can be." Organa replied, "You can imagine that the Fleet is putting it's thumb down on the particulars, especially when you consider that Palpatine would rather they had died in the crash and not _Strikefast_."

"So you think she's alive and with them?"

Organa raised his eyebrows, leaned back in his seat and grinned, remembering a certain incident he had witnessed out of the corner of his eye right after the Battle of Coruscant. "I do."

He took a few bites of his food, a delicious salad made from Alderaani vegetables with meat from some sort of Corellian poultry.

When he had swallowed, he looked at his dinner companion. "Besides, do you have a better idea?"

"Bail, she might really be dead."

He shook his head. "No, I don't think so. If they knew for certain, they would still be going on about it. I doubt Palpatine knows that she was the leader of the 2000. He probably knows the group existed, but since we never got around to presenting our proposal to him, he probably isn't quite sure who is a part of it. Amidala's death would be the perfect heinous crime to blame the Jedi for, but it's a lot harder to make it stick without a body than 'killed accidentally in the crossfire when a missile hit her apartment'."

For a moment Organa considered telling her about who he thought was the father of her child, but decided that it was best not to spread that news until he had concrete evidence. He still felt too much respect for the Jedi Order.

Mothma considered what he had said. "You're probably right. But Bail, that still leaves us with the task at hand."

"I agree. We need to decide what to do. What's more, even if she isn't with them, if she's dead, with her parents or what have you, we need to open a channel of communication with the Jedi. They are likely to be the biggest and best organized group we've come across so far."

"It's still early days, Bail." Mothma replied, "But you're right, I suppose."

He grinned. "I'm not suggesting we do anything... to direct. But putting the first steps into place is something we should have done right after the declaration. Instead we sat around and watched how he dismantled everything we believed in for months."

"Any ideas how we can do what you suggest, Bail?"

"Don't worry. While you get our Corellian issues untangled, I will work on this in my own way."

"Somehow that doesn't make me feel any better." Mothma said with a wry smile. Next she waved for the waiter and while the Droid came over, she asked: "Why are you doing this?"

"Because it's what she would do for us, what they would do for us. We are here, with every creature comfort modern technology can provide, and where are they?"

The waiter arrived and both Senators handed the Droid the necessary credit chips. When he had departed, Bail continued: "Besides, my wife would skin me alive if I didn't return in time for the festival."

"You are leaving tonight?"

Organa nodded. "After session close today, yes."

"Greet your wife and your daughter from me, Bail." she said, rose and left.

Mothma hadn't even suggested doing this from Coruscant. Nowadays even the Alderaani communications systems weren't fully trustworthy, but on Coruscant it could be assumed that the Imperials sifted through outgoing message traffic. Droids with a key-word search software were cheap enough to do it. On Alderaan on the other hand he and his wife controlled the biggest provider as silent partners, and not many people knew. It was easy to slip in an untraceable HoloNet access shunt that, if someone really did try to trace it would lead him on a wild chase all over the Galaxy before ending up where it started, one of any number of random public HoloNet terminals somewhere on Alderaan. Not a perfect system, but that would have been a fully untraceable HoloNet access point, and such a thing was simply not possible.

* * *

><p>Upon stepping off the shuttle that had taken him back to his homeworld, Bail Organa was all but assaulted by the preparations for the Harvest Festival that, while technically the season only applied around the capital at this time of the local year, was usually celebrated planet-wide. His wife was usually very involved in the preparations, but for obvious reasons not this year. He could still remember as if it was yesterday when one warm summer's evening she had appeared holding the infant in her arms, cooing at the girl and twirling the white tufts of hair that poked out from between the blanket little Winter had been wrapped in.<p>

So instead of meeting him as he arrived, he found her sitting beside their daughter's crib, staring at her as if she was the most precious thing in the Universe. "She asleep?" he whispered as he slowly made his way over from the door to join her.

"Half an hour ago." his wife replied and kissed him on the cheek in greeting.

He knelt down next to her and joined her in staring at the sleeping child. "Do you ever regret it?"

"How could I?" Bail asked with a smile. "She had me wrapped around her finger the moment you stepped into my office."

Nothing more was said for what seemed to both of them a very long time, but eventually Bail tore himself away from his sleeping daughter.

"We need to talk."

Unlike the weekly sweeps of the Palace, the office was swept for bugs daily, and had been since before the Clone War. He still activated a small device meant to defeat anything hidden.

"I've heard those rumours again."

Breha clutched her husband's office chair. "Anything more to it this time?"

Bail shrugged. "More than last time at any rate. Still very, very thin, but at least enough for me to start looking into it."

"Then do it."

Bail knew that his wife had become fast friends with Senator Amidala during and before the war, and he knew that she missed her friend terribly. He knew that it had been hard for her to watch the Senator from Naboo glow with her child and herself be unable to have one, but they had both bonded over absentee men in their lives, though even there Amidala had refused to say who it was.

"Are you certain? We might not like what we find."

"Force, B. I need to know either way."

He sighed. "Very well then. I need to make some calls, and we should have this thing going by tomorrow."

"Good." Breha said, pinching the bridge of her nose in thought. "Did she ever tell you who the father was? Maybe she's with him."

Bail hated lying to his wife, but he still felt bound by a promise he had only ever made to himself. At the same time he saw that to say Breha was distressed was an understatement.

"I have had my... suspicions."

"Then why should she be with the Jedi like you believe?"

And she knew she had him in a corner. They had discussed the matter at length, he had told her everything he'd heard, and now she turned that knowledge around on him. He didn't reply, but he was torn. He had seen Amidala and Skywalker in after the Battle of Coruscant, he'd seen the Jedi sneak out of her office on several occasions, but he also knew that what the two of them had been doing was very, very illegal by the Jedi Code. But he had seen how happy it had made her, and it was more than obvious that sentiment went both ways, so he had resolved not to say anything to anyone.

Here he was then, confronted with the hopeful face of the woman he loved, their own daughter sleeping a few rooms down, and he knew that now was not the time to hold back.

"Do you remember that time shortly after First Geonosis? Well, I..."

And he told her everything he knew.

Breha had to process it for a long time. When she was done, she looked up at Bail. "Do it." she said, and the fierce look on her face told him that he better get moving. Half an hour and not a few tears later, she left him and he set about doing it. Fortified by a quick meal he left notice that he was not to be disturbed by anyone but his wife, and entered a very long and very complicated access code into his Comm terminal.

_"Sir?"_

"It seems the order we discussed last week needs to be placed after all."

_"Yes, Sir. I have someone we can be trusted not to screw it up."_

"Tell him to come to me the day after tomorrow to discuss delivery and payment."[/I]

_"Yes, Sir."_

The connection was severed and he powered down the terminal, but instead of doing some of the work that always seemed to chase him, Bail rose and went to his daughter's room once more. This time his wife wasn't there, she was probably in the kitchen giving directions for the next meal or preparing to feed Winter, something she insisted on doing herself. Bail saw that she was awake, not crying, but only fuzzing around and reaching for the blanket she had thrown off at some point. Instead of just giving it to her, he took both out of the crib and wrapped his daughter in it.

"Why can't you sleep, hmm?" he asked, and kissed her on her forehead. Yes, risks or not, he would do this, he would fight the good fight for her. He would find the Jedi.

**tbc**

** I hope no one minds that I invented a few (a few?!) things about Alderaan in this chapter. The planet has always intrigued me, from the moment I first saw ANH in the original version on TV in the early 90s and then later when the special editions came out in the theatre. **

** Regarding Winter, since TTL the Organa's won't be raising Leia for obvious reasons, the part of me that goes 'aaaw!' when he sees something cute or nice wanted them to be at least partly compensated for that. Since I don't have access to the comics that show her and Leia as kids, I am assuming that she always had that white hair, since that is implied by her article on Wookiepedia. As for her arrival, I hope no one minds that I'm fudging things a bit.**


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3  
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"For something called the Unknown Regions, this area is fairly boring, Master."

"We want boring. Exciting usually means being shot at." Jedi Knight Varan Kilvaari replied, though he knew that his Padawan didn't really complain about nothing going on. That raid two weeks ago had been excitement enough for him. "What we do need however is a place for a permanent base. One year aboard that ship is enough for me, thank you very much."

That left out the various odds and ends they had picked up since then. Between them, the Jedi had picked up enough reputable, semi-reputable and sometimes outright criminal contacts that could and would dispose of the loot they could not use themselves, but a lot was kept. Much of it was to feed the overcrowded Star Destroyer, though also every hyper-capable shuttle was kept, which was how the two of them had found themselves in this small Geonosian blockade runner that had somehow found it's way into the hands of one of the new Imperial Governours before being lost to the Jedi four months ago.

But that didn't solve the basic issue the Republic Remnant faced was one of supply and sheer room. However much space the absence of the Clones aboard _Fearless_ had opened up, it could not go on forever, which was why the Executive Committee, comprised to equal parts of Jedi, Navy Officers and now also a smattering of civilian refugees, had decided to set up some sort of base where everyone could be housed and more easily fed. Kilvaari didn't know how he felt about the Order being so much more closely intertwined with outsiders than it had ever been the case under the Old Republic. He also considered it to be a bit grandstanding that they were calling themselves the Republic Remnant at Senator Ami... Senator _Skywalker's_ suggestion, but in a way it was acceptable and soothed a few ruffled feathers among those on both sides that wouldn't accept the only alternative, one group completely subordinating itself under the other. After all, accepting the military ranks various Jedi had held in the Grand Army of the Republic before it had become the Imperial Stormtrooper Corps was one thing..

And the Senator was another can of worms all on her own. Most had accepted the revelation to the wider Jedi Order about her matrimony with the other Skywalker and the twins that were rapidly becoming the darlings of the entire ship, even though both Skywalkers refused to have them trained by the traditional methods. To him she and they represented a casual dismissal of the ways the Order had been run for generations, and because of that there still was a bit of resentment in his soul whenever he saw one of that family of four.

_'No, resentment is wrong. Resentment leads to envy, and envy is of the path to the Dark Side.'_

Kilvaari banished the thought, remembering that for all his many flaws, Skywalker had been the one who had given the Jedi enough forewarning to not be overrun by the Clones, and as much as he hated to admit it, Kilvaari knew that the old ways of doing things were over, because the Order simply could not sustain itself if it did not change.

There were some that clung to the old ways, and he had admittedly been one in the beginning, but that had changed when he had been knighted a month after the Exodus and been assigned the then masterless Jedi Padawan now at his side another two months later. After some issues in the first few weeks, the boy having missed his old master terribly, the two now got on rather well, and the Force bond between them was as strong as any Master/Padawan pair could wish. He liked the boy very much, and he knew that this went both ways. Besides, as a scholar by inclination, it pleased him that Zet Jukassa was, for all his eleven years, a very mature and wise beyond his years young boy.

"Is there something that bothers you, Master?" Zet asked, his concern flowing over the bond.

"Nothing of consequence, my young Padawan." he replied with a smile. He would have to get over his dislike for the Skywalkers and their Togrutan friend who was fast becoming a part of their clan as a surrogate aunt for the twins.

Oddly, he didn't begrudge Tano her choice of leaving the Order, that happened on occasion, there the problem was that she... she skirted around the edges without being willing to commit herself to the life, to the point of carrying a lightsabre she'd gotten from somewhere. But again, it was probably just his unwillingness to change his ways. Old pet, new tricks and all that.

He glanced over at Zet who was working the scanners as they surveyed this uncharted system, and he decided that in all likelyhood the next generation of Jedi Knights would be different. Among the younger ones, Knights, Padawans and Younglings they were the big heroes that had saved all their lives, and he had to admit, there was not a small part of truth in that sentiment, if of course somewhat overblown.

The Council didn't encourage that, but they didn't exactly do the opposite either, and Kilvaari knew that it was because at times like these, morale was vitally important. Still, he couldn't help how he felt, and he supposed that was human nature.

"Master, there's something on the long-distance scanners."

"A ship?"

Zet leaned closer to the scopes he was monitoring. "I don't know, Master. It's stationary and I don't read any energy emissions but it's about as large as a Corellian Destroyer."

"Movement, location?"

"It's about a light-second out from the fourth planet's current position, no movement."

Kilvaari consulted the star chart they'd made only an hour earlier in his head. The fourth planet was in the middle of the habitable zone of this system, with a likely very varied climate.

"Let's get closer, shall we?" he said, and changed the shuttle's course towards their contact.

As they approached and the object became visible on the optical scanners, he saw why it couldn't be a ship. It was a space station, and a very, very old one. It's dusty and impact-pitted hull was of no design he recognized, but the general function as some sort of orbital defence station was clear enough from the way the weapon turrets, although now literally frozen in place, looked outwards.

"And you are sure there are no energy readings?"

"None, Master. No station-keeping drives, no targeting scanners, not even internal heating. Just... nothing at all but metal and alloys."

"Can you give me an age estimate?"

Zet shook his head, and it was a bit much to ask from an eleven year old who had to work with sub-par equipment.

By the station's battered appearance and the thick layer of dust on it, it had to be very old indeed. In fact, it seemed to be the by far oldest space object Kilvaari had ever seen. As they got closer to the planet though the station slipped from his mind, because he could sense even at this distance that this planet was _very_ strong in the Force. Not like Dagobah, the system Master Yoda had talked about some time back. That planet was dark, very dark.

This one... Kilvaari knew they both sensed the overflowing life here, and it was.. light. Very light. Sure, there was the usual swirl of violence and death that came with a primitive eco-system, but overall the Darkness was no than on, say, Naboo or Alderaan.

"Master..."

"Indeed, Zet. This bears closer inspection."

He steered the shuttle into a high orbit and they began as detailed a scan of the surface as the Genosian sensors would allow. The planet was a temperate world, smack dab in the middle of the habitable zone. Most of the land-mass was concentrated on the southern hemisphere between the lush dark green equatorial zone and the sub-arctic, with only a chain of volcanic islands north of the equator, most of them dormant mountains that poked through the surface of the oceans that covered a little less than three quarters of the surface. To the north of that were some islands that were not quite large enough to rate as a continent.

The actual continents on the southern half of the planet were criss-crossed with rivers, mountains, deserts and pretty much every possible landscape that one could want. The largest continent had what seemed to be a large lake in the middle of it, fed by glacial streams from the mountain range to the north itself running off into several rivers that fed into yet another ocean, likely some sort of massive extinction-level event impact crater that also had had a hand in creating the mountains. On the northern of it, near where one of the rivers fed into the lake he detected...

"Master, those are artificial structures."

"I see, Zet."

Kilvaari manoeuvred the shuttle so that it was directly above the anomaly they had detected and zoomed in as much as the optical sensors allowed.

What he saw was a set of buildings at the foot of a cliff. Partly built inside the cliff itself and on a platform that itself towered over the river that ran in a canyon a few hundred metres below that, they seemed to be made of ferrocrete and metal, but mostly over grown with local plant life, and definitely not used in a long time. In fact, they were barely visible even if you knew what to look for.

The platform wooded hills that eventually went over into the mountain range. All in all, a perfect place for a colony. Which was why he felt strange in looking at the abandoned one he saw down below.

"Air samples?" Zet suggested, and Kilvaari nodded with approval.

"Very good, Zet. Ready the survey drone."

"Yes, Master."

The Padawan went to the tiny back compartment that held one of _Fearless_ survey/recon drones and readied it for launch while Kilvaari piloted the shuttle on a course that would have them on a slow downward spiral with the abandoned camp in the centre.

Zet returned and reported the drone ready for launch.

They launched it by opening the cargo hatch and allowing for the drone to fall out by dipping the shuttle in that directions.

"Readings are coming in, Master." Zet reported, "The atmosphere is fairly close to Coruscant standard, but oxygen is slightly higher, and average air pressure as well."

"Contaminants?"

"No known contaminants, atmosphere seems to be perfectly breathable to most species. If we wanted to, we could open the windows right now."

Kilvaari smiled. "We are still a mite too high in the atmosphere for that, my eager young Padawan. But I'll keep it under advisement."

Zet flushed. "Yes, Master."

"Anything else I need to know?"

"Faint, very faint traces of volcanic ash."

There probably had been an outbreak not to far away in the near past, with most of the ash clouds never making it across the mountains to the north.

"Any sign of sentient life?"

"None, Master. No artificial pollution of any kind, no sign of artificial roads, waterways or anything."

Technically he had enough to make a report to the Council, but something drew him to the camp. Not just instinct, but it was deeper, it was in the Force.

He glanced over at where his Padawan was still busy with the drone's readouts. It didn't seem that he had sensed it, but then, it was very faint, at the very edge of his perceptual range. He had no doubt that more experienced Jedi than himself would be able to sense it better, so it was likely that Zet could not at all. It got stronger as they closed though, so that might change.

"Zet, we are going to land and inspect that camp closer. Even though his planet seems perfect, something made the previous owners abandon it, and we need to know what that was."

He set the shuttle down in the open half-circle the abandoned buildings formed at the cliff and the first thing he noticed was that they had obscured a clearly artificial cave entrance into the bedrock of the planet. It, and what looked very much like the entrances to several hangars, but again, no sign of inhabitants or even any refuse left behind. The building soon turned out to be empty one-room shacks, colonial prefabs that could have come from literally every civilized world in the Galaxy. The only sign of habitation they could find was that there were corroded remnants of metal that may have been, preserved over the centuries by the hermetically sealed environment of the habitats.

When they stood in front of the dark cavern, Zet was visibly distraught. "Do we go inside?"

Kilvaari smiled at him. "Be mindful of your feelings, Zet. Trust in the force, trust your senses and they will both protect you. Besides, I sense no malice from in there." It was clear that seeing his old Master shot down in front of his eyes had made him less trusting in his own abilities and he still needed occasional reassurance beyond the usual positive reinforcement.

He knew that Zet would now be reaching into the Force himself and it seemed that whatever he was able to sense did not reassure him too much, but he also did not seem to be more scared than before.

So they walked in.

Between their lightsabres and their Force-enhanced senses they didn't need torches as non-sensitives would have, but it was still very dark and they could not see all that far. If there ever had been any infrastructure such as power supply and lighting it had ling since been rotted away by time and the elements, but even an untrained observer would have been instantly aware that the cave was too regular in form and workmanship to be anything but artificial, even if the cracked masonry hadn't given it away. To Kilvaari it looked like it was an entrance or a supply tunnel of some sort and sure enough, Zet discovered the first branch tunnel only a few steps on.

"Wait a second, Zet."

They stopped and Kilvaari pulled a small device from his robes. The scanner was nothing special, but it had come in handy before. A quick sweep of their surroundings showed that the access tunnel they were in reached into the cliff and the plateau beyond for almost a kilometre, and even though it went beyond the scanner's range, there was a virtual insect hive of smaller chambers and tunnels beyond, and even a few caves on the upper level that could and probably had served the original owners as hangars for fighters and shuttles.

The ground was dry, so either the local ground-water was a considerable depth below them or there was some sort of gravity based drainage system they couldn't see.

"What do you think, Master?"

"Well, there seems to be no apparent cause for this to be abandoned. No predators we could see, no Dark Side infestation, no virus or other plague that could have killed everyone and no bodies that could tell us what went on here. Odd, but hardly out of the realm of possibility. We need to call this in."

**tbc**

** Overall, most of this chapter and some of the next one play my theories on the distant history of the GFFA.**


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

Sixteen hours later, a second shuttle landed and disgorged Masters Yoda, Windu and Nu, the only fully trained Archeologist the Order had left.

They were given a short verbal report by Kilvaari standing in the cave entrance.

"Interesting this is." Yoda said after the Knight had withdrawn to the shuttle he had arrived in. "A perfect base he has found, but no trace of the occupants there is."

Nu had drifted over to where the masonry that supported the native rock began and inspected it closely. "This is masonry, made out of native stone, probably they used the debris that was removed when they made all this. What I don't understand is why there is so little deterioration and damage. Likely there is a layer of ferrocrete beneath all this, but there still should be some water damage..."

Windu knew that this would give her a puzzle to gnaw on for a while, and he was glad for it. Nu still mourned the loss of her archives in the Temple to the Empire, and she had been despondent of late because of it. She had assisted Master Yoda in ordering the Holocrons back into their respective sections, thankful that none had been lost or left behind during the Exodus, but that had ended weeks ago, and she had been at a loss about what to do with herself.

"This whole construct is old, very, very old. So is the station." Windu said, referring to quick study they had made with the shuttle's sensors on approach to the planet. "It could be Rakata built."

"The Dark Side I do not sense. Based on it, all their technology was." Yoda said with a shake of his head, "Strong in the Force, this Planet is, but not Dark."

"So if it's not the Infinite Empire who built this place, then who?"

Yoda didn't reply, but Nu re-joined them. "Shortly after the Reformation, the Republic commissioned a study into the Infinite Empire, trying to deduce it's origins and original intent, if any. From what I can remember, on of the researchers who was a bit of an expert in Coruscanti History theorized that the reason why most species have the same general layout as Humans or Twi'leks and that we can all generally breathe the same sort of atmosphere is that there was a so-called precursor race that was alone in the Galaxy but then proceeded to seed developing worlds with the potential for sentient life with samples of their own DNA. There has never been any proof for that, and the theory has never really gained any ground in the scientific community of any world that I am aware of, but it's there. By the looks of it and the lack of Dark Side infestation, this seems to be not of Rakata origin at all."

"So are you saying that this might be a colony of theirs?"

"Goodness me, no. As I said, it's only a theory, but it might go towards explaining some things. Another one is of course that we aren't the first to come here after the original occupants left. Someone may have been here more recently than the Rakata and have stripped everything down to the bare walls. There are indications that this was once a full functional base but even the wiring was taken out at some point. We will have to do a complete survey of the tunnel systems, but I think we may have found what we were looking for, Masters."

"Agree, I do. Not of the Rakata, this place is. Useful to us, instead."

"I would still like to know why this has been abandoned, from the looks of it, this is the perfect place for a colony."

"It may not have been thirty thousand years ago, Master." Nu replied, gesturing towards the ravine where the river ran. "Even so, this is by far the best candidate we've found so far."

"Survey the tunnels we must first, before the others we call."

Without waiting for anyone to answer, Yoda made his way into the tunnels.

Of course it was him who ended up finding it.

It was hidden in one of the deepest chambers, and the rock that disguised the entrance was made so that only a trained Force user could find and open it. Inside they found a room that had been hermetically sealed since the last colonists had left. Again there were no bodies, and the only things in the room were ancient stone tablets stacked on a pedestal in the middle of the room. Much of the positive Force energy they had felt seemed to be concentrated in this, a round room that had about the circumference of a YT-1300 freighter.

As they approached the pedestal in the half light of their Lightsabres and what little light came in from the surface through cleverly arranged lighting chutes in the ceiling, it became obvious that the centrepiece of the pedestal was made from a material that seemed to be collecting some of the positive force energies the planet produced, that seemed to dampen everyone's ability to sense it. It seemed that the device was emitting a sort of Force dampening field that, while it didn't impede anyone's abilities on the ground, seemed to dissipate anyone's signatures into the background field of the planet.

The Masters had unspoken consent that this was the reason why they hadn't sensed such a powerful concentration of Force Energy from orbit.

Nu was the one that inspected the tablets, but if they had ever shown something, the aeons had worn it away, even what little air movement there was in the chamber had worn away the writing etched into them. It wormed her, as a historian, archaeologist and librarian, that she could not decipher them, but right now there was nothing she could do.

"So, what do you think?"

Windu hadn't asked anyone specific, but the feelings coming from the others was clear.

* * *

><p>They carried the twins off the shuttle with now practised ease, and Anakin couldn't help but still be fascinated with how Padmé tended to Luke. Eight months ago, she had caught him tickling the twin's bellies from across the room using the Force and back then she had been sad that this was yet another thing her husband could do that she would never be able to share with her kids, but as he had pointed out, neither Luke nor Leia would care how parental love was given, just that it was, and that they would love her regardless. It was then that he had realized that the long, difficult and sometimes outright painful period of adjustment to their new status as refugees, rebels and parents of two had been over. After years of only occasional, stolen hours together, the new situation had been difficult to say the least and the two months had been hard, they had exchanged more than a few harsh words, but now?<p>

Now both had had moulded themselves into their new roles and in spite of what had happened on Coruscant and the future that faced them, Anakin couldn't have been happier. He kissed Leia's hair, now long enough for a cute little tail, and stepped away from the ramp to let those coming after them pass. As soon as he was down, his daughter squirmed in his arms, wanting to be let down.

"Dada!" she babbled, and he hobbled her for a moment and turned her in his arms.

"Now Princess, I can't let you down yet. There are too many people around, and you know that's too dangerous."+

Leia pouted in a way that often got her what she wanted, and not only from her father, but Anakin was all too aware that shuttles were landing everywhere, disgorging people and materiel.

"You do know what would happen if I let you down, would you, Leia? Your mother would be very cross with the both of us."

"With you, maybe, General. With my daughter? Not so much. She's far too innocent to be as reckless and irresponsible as you are. You can never say no to her."

Glanced over his shoulder at where Padmé sitting on a rock, bouncing Luke on her knees.

"Base lies! See, Princess? I haven't even done anything yet and it's starting already."

Padmé just smiled in response and turned to watching how Jedi and civilians alike unloaded the shuttles and transports that had landed on the plateau.

"Come on you two." Anakin said after a while, "Let's find Uncle Obi Wan and see what we can do to help."

He held Leia with one arm and used his prosthetic hand to help his wife to her feet.

"Thank you." she said and kissed him on the cheek. The way down to the entrance of the base was gradual enough that standard repulsor-lift equipment could be used to move supplies, so unloading and the moving of what they had proceeded fairly swiftly, and it was obvious that everyone was glad to be out of the ships at last.

In the ten months and spare change since the Exodus, the Jedi and the crew of _Fearless_ had managed to stay out of the Empire's grasp by keeping to the very fringes of known space, and they had not been the only ones to do that. During that time they had picked up a few new friends, mostly some of the first waves of refugees Imperial occupation policies on restive worlds produced, but the biggest addition to their group had been a Givin-crewed Wavecrest-Class Frigate that had been plodding along near the site of one of their raids on an Imperial Convoy, low on every sort of supplies but hypermatter.

There had been plenty of suspicions on both sides for the first time, but since neither opened fire and _Fearless_' fighters had called for the frigate to accept their attempts at communication, that had eventually been solved, and the Givin had ended up joining the group, figuring that the mathematical chances of them reaching their homeworld and not incurring Imperial wrath as a result as close to zero as to make no practical difference.

Padmé had been the one to do most of the talking, and now she had ended up as something of an unofficial Ambassador at large as Anakin liked to call it, always being the one to arbitrate any disputes that arose. She had also been the one to suggest the compromise that now governed _Fearless_ and the entire group.

Many Jedi had held high rank in the Grand Army of the Republic, so every one of the Masters had at least nominal command authority over _Fearless_ and her crew. In exchange for all but the most senior Jedi relinquishing even this nominal authority, Captain Kawgipi and her crew would accept who remained and have a veto right if they felt the risk of anything they were ordered to do was too high. Only Anakin, Obi Wan, Yoda, Windu and, oddly, Ahsoka had retained their previous rank, though the latter had insisted that she remain a Commander.

They all now held Republic Navy commissions issued by the 'Interim Council', which was a body formed from originally only two representatives speaking for the Jedi Order, Padmé herself and Master Yoda, as well as Captain Kawgipi herself as well as her Operations Officer but that now also contained Givin representatives as well The two other ships that had joined them, one of them a freighter full of Battledroids headed for a smelting oven, were represented by Kawgipi. The other was of more immediate use. One was an ex-Genosian Hardcell-class turned prison ship carrying political prisoners, most of them Republic loyalists and their families. None of the Imperial officers and crew had survived the rising of the prisoners once _Fearless_ had dropped out of hyperspace by accident due to a damaged energy converter and shot their escorts out of space. However records in the ship's computer indicated that they had taken a very roundabout route to partake in some sort of ultra-secret Imperial military construction project as nothing more than slave labour.

All in all the group had the start for a fair little colony, with a very varied population.

Up above, perched on the very edge of the cliff, Ahsoka sat and took in the scene. Due to her strange status, somewhere between normal Republic Navy and the Jedi, she didn't have an assigned task at the moment, and even though she hadn't looked forward to moving around storage crates all day, at least it would have given her something to do. Being idle gave her time to think, and right now that was not something she wanted.

She saw how Anakin and Padmé approached where Obi Wan and a few others were directing various groups into various sections of the base, and how Yoda and _Fearless_' communications officer supervised some of her techs setting up a preliminary communications links to the ships in orbit.

If she was to be honest with herself, even though the bitterness she had felt the last years since leaving the Order, had still felt when returning to Coruscant after their small adventure on Corellia had started to recede, she still had a vibro-axe to grind with the Order. Upon thinking back, she still believed that she had made the right choice in leaving the order behind back then, yet what had happened during Order 66 and the Jedi Exodus had taught her firmly that the Order had paid a very steep price for it's mistakes. Considering what Master Windu had said, or rather tried to say, during the desperate defence of the Temple a small and growing part of her liked to believe that they were sorry for how she had been treated, but at the same sense of betrayal that had made her leave the Order was doing it's best to stomp on that.

She knew that while Windu, Yoda and most of the other Masters, of course including Anakin and Kenobi, treated her with the utmost respect, with more than she felt she deserved, but there were still many among the Jedi rank and file who disliked her for having walked away. She didn't blame them for that, in their position she would find it equally unfathomable.

Ahsoka figured that it should have amazed her that she still sought their approval, but they were the only family she'd ever really known, memories of her birth-parents being little more than hazy images now, and that was probably why the events after her trial had stung so much. Not what Tarkin had tried to do, but more that the Jedi had been so dismissive of it all.

Still, even though she still had some issues to clear up with them, she would help the Order to the best of her abilities, because Master Ti had been right. There was more to being a Jedi than membership in the Order. She hadn't talked to anyone about the conversation she'd had with the late Shaak Ti, not even Anakin, but she knew that what had been said there was right. Besides, no one deserved what had happened to the Jedi. At first there had been a hope that some of those who had been off-world at the time of Order 66 may have survived, but so far no one had managed to find them. She liked to hope that there were some Jedi who would try to seek out the Order, but with every week that passed it became more and more unlikely.

No, if she was not doing it for herself, she was doing it for Master Ti. She also knew that she had to keep an open mind, as even though she wasn't supposed to know, Anakin had let it drop to her about a month after the Exodus that Master Windu himself had actually apologized to him for the treatment he had received when first joining the Order.

Ahsoka turned her eyes away from the scene below and leaned back, steadying herself with her arms against the lush grass that covered most of the plateau. She stared up at the small clouds as they slowly moved towards the mountains in the north, and decided that it was high time she did something to help.

Barely back on her feet, she sensed someone was approaching. It was one of the Padawans, though she couldn't remember his name. "Commander Tano?"

"Yes?"

"If you're not a Jedi, why do you carry a Lightsabre?"

Now that was a very good question.

**tbc**

** In the Season 6 Episode of that other franchise's TNG, "The Chase", the in-universe reason for the universality of humanoid life in the Galaxy has had a similar explanation. The precursors plant hints at that in the planetary genome of every world they seeded so that when they are advanced enough they can put it all together and find the last message by their common ancestors. Politics being what they are, it didn't quite work out, but it's nice they gave us an explanation for a situation created by 60s TV technology and budgets.**

**Regarding Ahsoka's rank, the only time I can remember where it was specifically stated was in a Season 2 Clone Wars episode where she was referred to as "Commander" by a Clone. **

** Let's talk some numbers next. According to my knowledge, a Hardcell had a complement of ~1.200, crew included. Let's say that the Imps would damn near stack politicals horizontally, so let's say 1.4k prisoners overall, of which two-thirds are human. Yes, I am aware the conditions for the prisoners would have been really, really awful.**


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

As it turned out, even an Emperor was still inundated by the mundanity of the day to day running of the state. True, he had the ultimate power, what he said would be done, but at the same time the bureaucracy of the Old Republic hadn't been entirely pointless after all. There was only so much Palpatine could delegate to his underlings, and far too much of it still ended up on his desk.

Even if there was something he wanted to see, such as the secret status report that Tarkin had sent regarding the labour shortage on the Death Star project. The Moff hadn't outright stated it, but it was clear that he too suspected that the Jedi were among those that had started to raid the convoys in the Outer Rim. Tarkin had started to re-route the convoys assigned to the Death Star project on his own authority, and Palpatine was realist enough to appreciate initaitive where it dovetailed with his own intentions so well.

With something like the Death Star which was easily the most complicated weapons project since long before the founding of the Old Republic delays were only to be expected, but there were those that could be avoided. The Jedi.. they had earned his very special anger, and even the extermination of the small group of survivors that had hidden out on Kashyyyk by the rebuilt 501st Legion had done nothing to quell that, and the rumours associated with that action didn't help. Intellectually he realized that he was letting his hatred for Anakin Skywalker and those with him rule his decision-making, which could be a bad thing even for a Sith, but at the same time he grew increasingly frustrated with the inept efforts by the Outer Rim Moffs to find their group. The Stardestroyer they had taken had been rumoured to have been seen all over the Outer Rim Territories, anywhere from Bastion to Kamino, though if she really had been present at the latter location, the ridiculously weak attempt by the local Rebels to destroy the cloning facilities there would likely have been successful, and the local commander had paid the price for that fact already.

The problem was, even a Dark Lord of the Sith could not be in two places at once, and without concrete evidence for their location to go on, he could not afford to be away from Coruscant for this long, not when there were still hotspots all over the Empire to deal with. The Jedi group on the Wookie homeworld had only be one of them. There were still considerable non-Droid CIS remnants that needed to be dealt with, there were the Hutts he needed to reassure, and lastly, there simply were not enough ships in the fleet right now to comb through the entirety of the known space with the sort of detail needed.

If he had an Apprentice, he thought sourly, then this would be another matter, but he didn't have one, so there was that.

Then of course there was the matter of the Temple. His original plans for it were still in operation, but rumour had it that people were still whispering in fear about his outburst when he had discovered that the shifty little green dwarf of a Jedi Master had managed to abscond with their _entire_ Holocron collection. The rest of the Archives were still there, only moderately damaged when the Guard had made it's last stand near the entrance, but the vault and the chamber had both been stripped to the bare walls, which meant that the treasure trove of Force knowledge he had wanted to put to use for the inquisitors ever since he had realized that Skywalker would not be turned. Oh he would get his revenge, treason was not easily forgiven.

But right now the Inquisitors needed to be created, recruited and trained first. Originally the plan had been to give them only marginal force training and recruit people who had only a passing acquaintance with the Force, but the unexpected snag, festering sore in his side that was the exiled Jedi Order had forced him to alter his plans. What he had in mind would be a massive violation of the Rule of Two, but he had no other choice, and besides, he was the Emperor, he made the damn rules! Of course he would have to have a close look at the Inquisitors, to ensure that none of them became powerful enough to challenge him.

And he still needed a proper apprentice.

To that end he had a candidate in mind. In the last ten months he had weeded out the worst of them, and now only one remained. In some ways he regretted having Dooku killed before trying to turn Skywalker, for all his flaws, the count had been loyal enough and also a fair recruiter himself.

The Office Comm beeped, and the figure then entered.

With features disguised by the robes the figure was wearing someone who didn't know the person could not have told just what species the Dark Jedi belonged to, but Palpatine knew that it was a Human. Not only because he wouldn't have accepted anything else, but because he'd talked to the Dark Jedi before, in the Temple a few weeks after Order 66. Of course that didn't mean that his potential apprentice was due any special favours, and would have to go through the same test as the other candidates, though Palpatine was the only one who knew that it was only done for show.

_"You called for me, Mylord?"_ the Dark Jedi said, voice obscured by identity-hiding technology.

Sidious noted the way he had been addressed with approval, this particular candidate saw him as a Sith Lord, not his master, nor as the Emperor. That were all mistakes that would have cost this candidate more than a few harsh words.

"I have." he said out loud. "There remains only one last thing for you to do to convince me that you are worthy and not just a snivelling little beast like the others."

There hadn't really been any others, but the Dark Jedi didn't need to know that, if anything it would increase motivation. Manipulation was part and parcel of the Sith existence, though Sidious knew all too well that it didn't always work. But this particular young talent had escaped the clutches of the Jedi Order soon enough and was still malleable. Though the need for one last test was real enough, even though he suspected that one on one the Dark Jedi may not be a match for the target yet. Sidious didn't really care how it was accomplished, just that it was.

"Well my friend, I want you to eliminate someone for me."

_"I am not a bounty hunter, Mylord."_

"If this was a matter for a mere bounty hunter, I would have sent one." Sidious said, with a slight irritation colouring his voice. "You will understand when you see who the target is."

He pressed a button and a hologram of the target began hovering over his desk. The Dark Jedi gave an appreciative nod. _"You were wise to forgo the Bounty Hunters. General Grievous is a strong adversary."_

Of course he didn't need to know that several Bounty Hunters had tried their luck, and of course failed. Grievous had apparently made his fair share of enemies over the years, because the bumbling fools that had tried to kill him only to die in return had certainly not been sent by Sidious. The only bounty who might have had a chance was the late Jango Fett, and he was long dead, his special skills not having transferred to any of the clones.

The Dark Jedi studied the Hologram. _"Do we know where he is?"_

Sidious shook his head. "Not precisely. Imperial Intelligence is not yet what it has to be, and by the time we get any reports, he has likely already moved on. During the war, the General was very hard to track."

He sighed inwardly. "As you will find out, I am not one to act on mere rumours, but at the moment it is the best... no, the only source of information we have. But for once we have definitive information."

Sidious manipulated the controls of the holoprojector and it now showed a map of the area of space bordering the Corporate Sector before zooming in to a small world at the edge, near where the semi-independent Corporate Sector had begun to claim additional systems.

"He is there," Sidious continued, "because many of the Corporate Sector's more influential companies supported the separatists, and some there might support him still."

They would not if they knew what was good for them, as the Empire could and would crush the sector if Sidious so wished, but it would be difficult and expensive, so he tried to avoid it if he could. It didn't help that many of the former CIS mid-level leadership that had escaped the first purges sought refuge there, because they could read the situation as well as he did. At least the Hutts still had their long memories and thanks to Jaba's agitation tended to eject CIS refugees unless they happened to prove useful. Grievous might be one of those, but there also was an equally big chance they would vaporize him out of hand, and the General was not known for taking this sort of risk with what remained of his own hide.

"But don't expect that this mission will be an easy one. Grievous has an extensive guard force, consisting of Battledroids that were either newly manufactured in a secret location," Sidious said, declining to mention that Intelligence knew perfectly well where it was, "mercenaries from within the Corporate sector and at least one Geonosian Company. All armed with the sort of Separatist weaponry that is to be expected."

The Dark Jedi considered the map and Sidious as if trying to deduce the level of underhanded manipulation going on right now. After a few moments, the Dark Jedi nodded.

_"I will return with proof of the General's death."_

"See that you do."

_"Yes, Mylord."_

Sidiou turned and the Dark Jedi left his office.

* * *

><p>Once in the her personal shuttle, she removed the device that had altered her voice, and once again wondered why Palpatin... Sidious had insisted on it, but she was fairly certain that it wouldn't be needed any more. By his description of the target, and more importantly by what he hadn't said, she was also certain that she had been sent on a suicide mission with the intent that she either perish or accomplish the goals and return to be the new Apprentice.<p>

She didn't know why Dooku or whoever else had been before him had sought the position, but her own motivation was only the one. Revenge.

_Ten months ago, in the Jedi Temple___

_The twenty-eight Stormtroopers that surrounded her led her deeper into the charnelhouse that had been the Temple once, and she saw that the reason why she had been so roughly handled readily enough. Oh, the bodies of the dead suffered by both sides had long since been removed and were currently being burned, but blaster strikes and cuts made by lightsabres in the walls and generally everything she saw told a story of a fierce and hard-fought battle. It also explained why the 501st had not yet left Coruscant for one of the various pacification efforts around the new Empire._

_By the looks of the still smoking wrecks outside, the battle had only ended a few hours ago. That impression was reinforced when a few Stormtroopers carrying the body of Master Shaak Ti to be burned past them. She was led into the archives and they found Sidious/Palpatine inspecting the empty, the EMPTY Holocron vault, and she couldn't help be amused by the look on Sidious' face. His rage must have been something to behold when he first found out._

_"So, you have returned."_

_In retrospect, she supposed it shouldn't have surprised her that Sidious was keeping tabs on ex-Jedi, but it still made her unsure of herself._

_"What do you think will happen to you now?"_

_Sidious crossed his arms behind his back and walked up to her._

_"I'm not exactly sure, Mylord. You either have me shot like the Jedi or... I suppose you could offer me an alternative."_

_"Good, good. The Jedi have not managed to destroy your ability to think then."_

_She snorted with disgust. "Hardly. The Jedi are fools. Had they allowed themselves to tap into the entirety of the Force, we would not be here right now."_

_"Ha. That much is true." Sidious said, and nodded in approval and inspected her. She would do nicely, because right now, he was desperate enough to scrape the bottom of the barrel, but with some training..._

_"You will be taken to Byss, and I will join you there in time. Train your abilities as good as you can, facilities there are provided. I take it she had a light-sabre?"_

_The last sentence had been to the Stormtroopers, and one of the Clones handed Sidious her weapon. He ignited it, the blade was scarlet red._

_"Presumptuous, but at least it saves valuable time. Take her away!"_

_With that she was turned on her feet and marched out of the Room, with Sidious still holding her sabre._

She had spent six months on Byss in the citadel without Sidious showing his face, and her having nothing more to do than burn through the citadel's stock of training droids, she had decided not to stay. After planning her escape for almost three of those six months. The last element of her plan had been to take one of the training sabres she'd been given by one of the serving droids that were her only company, and remove the magnetic field restrictions. Since this required the use of forbidden tools and she'd been... punished by the automated security systems for trying this three days after arriving there, she needed to be quick. Her newly acquired blade in hand, she had proceeded to deflect the automatic blaster fire that was caused by her breaking into the workshop and proceeded to cut her way through the droids that had tried to stop her out of the inner compound, into the shuttle bay and... directly into the arms of at least two-hundred Stormtroopers, with Sidious at their head.

"In the next test you will have to act faster." had been the only thing he'd said before turning away. The next four months had been spent in various training classes, always being told that she would eventually have to compete against several other candidates, though she had sensed that this was a mere attempt to manipulate her into trying harder. She had taken up several tasks for her new Master, such as the destruction of the Crystal caves on Ilum and Dantooine, or overseeing the Base Delta Zero against Adega, which, while not specifically targeting the few remaining crystal sites there, had been very enlightening to her in the way the Empire dealt with dissent.

Now she was beginning her last test before her formal education in the ways of the Sith, and she was looking forward to the experience.

She unclipped her sabre. Recently, she had channelled even more of the Dark Side into it's crystal, giving the weapon a dark crimson hue almost like her own blood. Sidious knew this and approved of it, as it meant that she was becoming an ever stronger servant of the Dark Side. Yes, she would be a Sith, and eventually she would be the only true Sith.

**tbc**

**As I said, very obscure. Let's see if someone can figure it out over time. No, it's not Ventress. Why did I choose Girl!Not!Vader? Mostly for variety, and because in many other stories, Original Character Vader replacements are often poorly thought out or outright self-inserts. Not going to happen here.**


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

The gardens surrounding the Royal Palace on Alderaan were a work of art by themselves. The outer enclosure was open to the public and many of the residents of the city took advantage of that, but there still were a few secluded spots the public didn't know about and the Alderaani Royalty had used them as conspirational meeting places for years and decades. The one where Bail Organa met his contact was a hidden alcove that, outwardly was a thick clump of trees by a sort that only existed here and supposedly had come from Coruscant, no, now Imperial Center before the city had covered the entire surface.

To anyone who knew the area the arrangement of marble seats that were beside the small artificial creek merely marked the entrance to this secretive meeting place, and the person Organa had come to meet had knew this as well.

"Have you found out anything?"

"Nothing, Sir." the person replied, and his frustration was evident. It had been a week since he had been first called to the palace for this, and he had found out exactly nothing of substance. "When I talked to them I got the sense that they knew something, but the Senator's parents and family are all very tight-lipped, and stick to their story."

Organa wasn't surprised. The Naberrie family still had been under tight Imperial scrutiny for months, and even though at least officially that had been relaxed after her parents had publicly denounced Padmé Amidala's actions. Which they had conveniently waited to do until after the state-funeral without a body held for her in Theed. It was obvious that there still was Imperial surveillance of some sort on them, but they had been nothing but model Imperial citizens since the Jedi had fled Imperial Center, and not talking to anyone who asked questions about their daughter and who wasn't someone in an official position was part of that.

And yet, he had suspected from the beginning that they might know something. The timing of their renunciation was very convenient, and assuming Senator Amidala was still alive, if there was anyone she would dare to contact it was her parents.

"Are you certain they know nothing?"

"I'm not sure." the Investigator replied and tilted his head from side to side, "I'm not quite buying the line that they never even tried to look into it, and the Senator's sister let slip something that leads me to believe that they may have known she was pregnant. Still, I met her in a public place and couldn't risk asking her any more detailed questions."

Organa considered what he had been told.

"Anything on the father?" he asked after a few minutes.

"If they knew, I didn't pick up on it. It's certainly possible though."

So in the end, they knew little more than before he'd spent a considerable sum on this research. He was tempted to send the Investigator out again, but he knew that the Naberries wouldn't talk to anyone they knew better than to trust blindly. Yet after all he had tried, he knew that the best, in fact the only and last lead he could possibly think of.

But how to approach them... the current senator for the Chommell Sector was little more than a handpuppet for Palpatine, probably part of some backroom deal by the Nabooan Government to escape punishment for Amidala's actions during and before the Jedi Exodus. Of course he couldn't accurately determine what was really had happened until he talked to someone who had been there.

That still left him with the same basic fundamental problem, and right now there was nothing he could do. He dismissed the Investigator and as the man left, he remained behind and sat down on a tree trunk that was left over from when this spot had last been cleared out.

"You should go yourself, B."

His wife and his daughter had joined him without alerting him to their presence.

"Breha, I'm too visible. If I start gallivanting around the Galaxy like a treasure hunter, people will start asking questions. If I were to go to Naboo, I would have to have a really good excuse."

They had discussed the possibility before, and he only repeated the same arguments he'd made after first sending the Investigator.

"If the Senator for Chommell was someone we could trust, it wouldn't be a problem, but that man is a Palpatine stooge if I've ever seen one."

Ironically he knew what Amidala would have done. She would have extended a formal and very public invitation to him and a dozen other, unrelated Senators for some sort of conference on one of the many issues that plagued the Galaxy and used it as cover for any number of activities, but right now...

"Why don't you use this?"

She handed him a Data reader and his eyebrows rose as he scanned the contents. Senator Priling may be, to use the vernacular popular on Alderaan right now, be an utter tool in all respects, but at least he was able to run the economy of his assigned station properly. The Alderaanian Fleet had already been reduced to strict compliance with Imperial laws, but there was nothing in those laws that prevented planets that could afford to do so from buying new equipment to replace obsolescent weapons. At the moment the Royal Alderaan Civil Fleet possessed thirty-two Block I V-19 Starfighters, and those were fast becoming obsolescent.

Priling knew this, as there had been a recent Senate debate that resulted in System Fleets being allowed hyper-capable starfighters after all, as many that could afford them traded on the outermost fringes of the Galaxy where Piracy had been an ever-present problem since the early days of the Old Republic, and now he was offering N1T fighters for sale.

Bail had no intention of actually buying them, as he wanted something that could carry proton torpedoes if need be, and the -T version of the N1 had deleted that capability, probably in an attempt to comply with that seemed to be Imperial preferences for Starfighter design. No, Bail had his eyes on the downrated ARC-170Cs that INCOM was trying to keep itself afloat with now that the Empire seemed to have selected Sinear Fleet Systems as their primary supplier.

The 170C may only have had a single crewmember, no rearward cannons and only two Proton-torpedo launcher, but they were available for non-Imperial customers to buy and, comparatively cheap.

Still, with the threat of an N1T buy hanging over them, the INCOM officials might be more malleable to sign the contract Bail wanted.

Thin, but should suffice as an excuse, especially if he went back to Coruscant for the next appropriations session with the Senate in two weeks.

* * *

><p>The <em>Sundered Heart<em> was down for a full replacement of her hypedrive motivator, so he'd taken the _Tantive IV_, which he preferred anyway, she was lesser known and, according to his wife less 'flash' and more low-key, and of course an accredited diplomatic vessel and as such at leas theoretically immune to search by planetary customs officials. Not that this had been a problem when he had arrived on Naboo, as soon as Captain Antilles had pointed out that he had an Imperial Senator in an official mission on board, the locals had fallen all over themselves to comply with his requests, a far cry from the people that had stood up to the Trade Federation more than a decade ago.

The official part of his meetings there had taken only a few hours to complete, Bail having left with a promise to seriously consider a buy, though he had no intention of doing so. Begging off from that night's reception because of work he had to do, he had instead slipped away and driven deeper into Theed using a speeder one of his crew had rented for him. He knew where Senator Amidala's parents lived.

During transit from Alderaan he had considered his course of action. On one there was something to be said for calling ahead, but at the same time it may be better to surprise them, lest they suddenly decided to spend the week at their house in the Lake Country. Better drop in unannounced and then deal with their wrath.

The upper-class district they lived in was far from the nightspots of Theed and was quiet by the time they arrived, with only a few nightswarmers returning from whatever they had been doing. Hardly surprising, on Naboo it was the middle of the work week and most people would have to get up in the morning. The address he'd been given led him into a street not too different from what he may have found in any of the upper-class districts of any city on Alderaan, and the house was of mid-size for the area. As he walked up, he tried to decide what to say, since if they knew something about the supposed death of their daughter, what reason would they have to trust him? In fact, if they were smart, they denied knowing anything and threw him out again the moment he started asking questions, but he had to know, he needed to know. If resistance against the Empire was to come to anything in his lifetime, then they needed contact with the Jedi.

He stepped up to the door, took a deep breath and rang the bell.

Jobal Naberrie opened the door, still in mourning clothes as she had been for the last year.

"Mrs. Naberrie, I am Bail Organa, Senator for Alderaan. It's about your daughter -"

The door was slammed shut in his face. Hardly surprising, but still..

He rang again, but no reply.

Again, once, twice, four times in the end, and no one opened the door.

But he was not going to give up, and not just because he was something of a Rebel.

When he rang the bell for a sixth time, Jobal opened again.

"Go. Away!"

Bail pushed her aside and stepped into the house before she could close the door again. He all but ignored her husband as he came storming towards them from the living room.

"I do not believe that Padmé is dead, and I think that you know she is not. I need you to tell me everything, because there is more at stake than you can possibly know."

When both remained unconvinced but neither asked him to leave nor called the security services, he ploughed on and decided to place all his Sabbac cards on the table. He knew that he was taking an awful risk, especially if the building was bugged, but right now he knew he had no choice. "If I am not mistaken, you feel about the Empire as I do, as your daughter does, and because of that I need to make contact with her. In the Core there are many who feel like we do, and..."

Bail sighed.

"Frankly, your daughter was a treasured colleague and friend, and not only to myself. We want and need to be sure either way. Please..."

Bail trailed off into silence, and Jobal's face was scrunched up into that frown of concern that Amidala had often used in the Senate, once again making it obvious that they were related.

"Jobal..." her husband said in a vain attempt to break the moment. "He..."

She made a 'be silent' gesture before looking Bail in the eyes. "I don't trust you. Padmé did, but I do not. You are a member of the Imperial Senate."

"Not everyone supports the so-called Emperor. I do not."

He tried to convince her of his intentions, but he could see the fierce protectiveness of a mother in Jobal's eyes warring with her desire to believe that not the entire Galaxy had gone mad.

"Jobal," Ruwee said, again trying to break the moment, "he is on the list."

Padmé's mother closed her eyes and sighed. "I know. But we.. we have to be so careful."

"Of course, love. But..."

"I know."

Without a further word or even sparing Bail a glance, she turned and walked off into the living room. Ruwee looked at Bail.

"This whole sorry mess has been hard on her." he said apologetically, "She... What happened to Padmé still brings her to tears whenever someone mentions it to her, and there is nothing I can do about it."

He paused.

"Oh, I've tried everything I know, but the one thing that would help, I can't give her."

"My daughter is only a year old, but I know my wife would be the same if something happened to her, so I can sympathize."

Ruwee glanced at Bail in surprise, having been unaware of Winter's adoption. Eventually he shook his head and followed his wife.

Bail, not having been denied permission, entered the living room just after him, and they found Jobal sitting on the couch and sobbing silently, staring at the deactivated holoprojector with tears streaming down her face. Ruwee was instantly by her side, placer an arm around her shoulders and tried to comfort her. When the pair noticed the Senator awkwardly standing in the doorway, Jobal said, without turning her head: "She trusts you, you know? She believes that you will do everything in your power to bring down the Empire. She always has such a faith in the people she trusts and loves."

Bail wanted to ask for an explanation, but before he could do more than open his mouth, Ruwee had placed a datachip in the appropriate slot on the projector and activated it.

The picture that formed was not the usual tight-focused, blue-tinted hologram of interstellar communications where the system filtered out anything but the caller, but the full-colour luxury version used in entertainment, complete with the annoying shaking that signified a hand-held camera.

* * *

><p>Padmé was sitting upright against the head end of a bed, presumably in a ship somewhere, judging by the bulkheads and generally very military appearance of her surroundings. The Senator herself was badly exhausted, with sweat matting her hair to her head, and in spite of the tears running down her face, she had a sort of happy glow.<p>

_"Angel, are you sure you want to do this right now?"_

Padmé nodded. _"Yes, right now. If we don't do this now, we'll be out of time."_

She sobbed, looked away from whoever it was behind the camera and directly into the sensor.

_"Mother, Father, when you see this, then you've probably already heard whatever lies Chancellor Palpatine has released about my fate and that of the Jedi Order."_

She sighed. _"In all likelyhood, nothing is true. The Clone Army has attacked the Jedi because he was aware that they were the biggest obstacle to his usurpation of the Republic, and myself because I have a.. very close and intimate relationship with them. In fact, I am with the exiled Jedi Order at this very moment, and as safe I can be under the circumstances."_

What was left of her senatorial exterior collapsed at that moment, and she began to cry as if there was no tomorrow.

_"Mom, Dad, I miss you terribly, I will always miss you. But it's too dangerous for us to have contact, not with Palpatine hanging over us all. I'm sneding you this..."_

She sobbed, and used the back of her hand to wipe away some tears, even though fresh ones were still falling.

_"I love you both, so much. I will always love you. I only ask you to do what I'm going to say next because I love you too much to see you rotting in one of Palpatine's prisons."_

Padmé sighed again and tried to steady herself.

_"As soon as news of my current whereabouts leaks to Palpatine's stooges or the public, you need to disown me in every possible manner. Publicly, by writing me out of your will, by saying to anyone that will listen that you disown my actions, and you have to tell the rest of the family to do the same. As far as you are concerned, I have to be as good as dead."_

After a pause, she continued. _"The only exceptions to that rule are Senator Bail Organa of Alderaan and his wife, as well as Senator Mon Mothma of Bormea. No one else, not even your best friends or any of the men you tried to hook me up with."_

The camera shuddered some more at this, and she smiled at whoever was holding it.

_"I have sided with the Jedi, and I will never regret this decision. You need to do as I ask, and try to keep out of Palpatine's attention. He will not rule the Republic forever."_

She smiled reassuringly. _"The reason why I chose to cast my bet with the Jedi is...I'm married to one of them and... there's a few people I want you to meet."_

Bail watched with fascination as she called for who was holding the camera to 'bring them over', and the camera angle changed, probably because it was deposited on a table of some sort that was lower than the person holding it before, but it still showed everything.

She was joined by none other than Anakin Skywalker. Bail recognized him immediately in spite of his shorter haircut. He placed a bundle wrapped in a grey blanket in her arms, and went back to retrieve another one before sitting down next to her and giving her a kiss on the top of her head.

_"Mom, Dad, I think you know Anakin. We don't have much time, so long story short: we love each other and got married in secret right after the start of the war. These two...they are your newest Grandchildren, Luke and Leia Skywalker."_

Bail couldn't help a fond smile at the picture of parental bliss the two Skywalkers radiated as they tended to their children, even through the camera. But Padmé sobered up eventually, and as she spoke, the tears returned.

_"Anakin will see to it that we are safe, but...I love you all, and tell it to the rest of the family. I love you, and I will miss you. I don't know if I'll ever see you again, but remember that, I love you."_

The image dissolved into nothingness.

* * *

><p>Silence reigned in the living room for what seemed to be hours.<p>

"Does that tell you what you wanted to know, Senator?"

"Most of it, Mrs. Naberrie." Bail said with a smile, "But one question remains, where did you get it from?"

Padmé's parents looked at one another and it was her father who spoke.

**tbc  
><strong>

I've seen the deleted scenes from AOTC, and as awkward as they are, they do give us a neat background for Padmé and are known to be canon. Saves me from having to make up a background for her. Add to that that I've read a few very good fanfictions (as well as some really bad ones) that feature the rest of her family.

I hope no one minds when I jump between ways how people are referred to, between Organa/Bail or Sidious/Palpatine. It's all depending on who they are talking to.

So, the X-Wing was designed at around 3-1 BBY, right? I can't see INCOM surviving and not having some sort of intermediate model between the ARC-170 and the T-65, or at least some sort of money-maker. Besides, the X-Wing is in some ways a fairly radical design departure from the ARC-170 and something needs to account for that, hence my downrated export model, an idea shamelessly stolen from Soviet Cold War practices.


	7. Chapter 7

**As usual, comments fuel me.**

**Sorry for the lateness of this, but real life intervened.  
><strong>  
><strong><br>**  
><strong>Chapter 7<strong>

The first thing everyone thought was that Anakin apparently could not loose his ability to stun the Jedi Council into silence. Himself... he was no exception.

To no one's surprise, it was Yoda who broke the awkward silence.

"A long time it has been, since an offer of Mastery was refused."

Of course Anakin had done so in the full knowledge about the thermal detonator he had thrown among the Order. The decision to do so had come after many deliberations both alone and with his wife, and he believed it was the right thing to do.

"Masters," he said, "I am deeply honoured by this offer, but... I do not believe I am ready for a seat on the Council. If you had asked me a year ago, I would have accepted immediately."

"Now you do not. Ready, you do not think you are. Why that is?" Yoda asked, though as usual Anakin suspected that the Grand Master knew everything perfectly well. He shrugged inwardly and answered the question anyway.

"Master, if the last year has taught be anything it's that you never stop learning, and just how much I have yet to be taught."

All the Masters knew him well enough to be able to tell how difficult this admission was for him. As someone who had constantly complained that he was being held back from his true potential, that the Council refused what he was due, Anakin still had difficulties admitting his own flaws, but unlike the pre-Exodus Anakin Skywalker, this one was willing and able to do it.

"Our judgement, you do not trust, yes? Think you know better, you do."

Anakin shook his head with a thin smile. "No, Master. But I think that between..."

All the Jedi in the room could sense that Anakin was grasping for words, for the right thing to say.

"Masters," he said, speaking to all of them at once, "frankly, I have broken the Code in the... words and best way imaginable, and I would not give up my family for anything in the universe. But as such, I feel I do not deserve the seat, nor do I want it as I would not only have to enforce the Code against attachment but also it would be me who would be taking my own children away from my wife once they are old enough. I can not and will not do either. I understand why the seat was denied to me in the past, and though that part of me is hopefully... gone, I still think..."

He spoke as a father and husband first, and they all knew it. They also knew that they had never officially sentenced Skywalker to any form of punishment, Order 66 having quite literally interrupted that meeting of the Council. Anakin had never mentioned the issue again, but now it was clear that it still weighed heavily on his mind.

"Punished you for this, we have not. Done this, we should have, but too late it is now." Yoda replied, "And severe punishment, there would not have been anyway."

Not it was Anakin's turn to be stunned, even more so when he sensed no surprise or serious disagreement from any of the other council members. They all sat in the chairs taken from the officer's lounge of the Remnant's Hardcell transport arrayed in a semi-circle in front of the Force Platform they'd found the plates on, and just waited for him to say something about this news.

"There's more." Obi Wan said and waited for Anakin to answer, even though he had a good idea what it was. Frankly, he agreed with Anakin, who knew this, but it was not Obi Wan's place to bring the matter up.

Anakin appreciated Obi Wan creating this opening for him, but he was unsure if he was to take it. He had promised her that he would leave this to her own efforts, but she hadn't actually done anything the entire time they had been on _Fearless_, and he wanted her to be given her due.

"Yes, there is. To be perfectly frank, I have no desire to be part of a Council that has yet to acknowledge any wrong doing in the aftermath of the Temple Bombing. It cost us not only the services of what would have been one of the best knights to enter the Order in the last century but also was just plain wrong and against someone who I consider to be part of my family. Ahsoka Tano may not be my Padawan any more, but it was not I who drove her out of the order. She may not be related by blood, but I will act on her behalf as if she were."

He took a deep breath.

"What happened then is inexcusable to say the least. Ahsoka was made to run away, her pleas were ignored and then she was accused by _Tarkin_." Anakin said, speaking the Moff's name with bitter venom, "Even more, when her innocence was finally proven, it was all dismissed as part of her trials when all she wanted, no, when all she _deserved_ was a sincere apology. Looking back at it now, I can understand why she left, and I would have acted the same had I been in her position. For the last year, before the Exodus and after, she has proven again and again that she is true to the living Force, to the Doctrine of the Order, however flawed and to the Order as an organization, even though we have cast her aside the one time she need our help in return. What's more, without her flying Master Ti's fighter, many of us would now be atmospheric dust on Coruscant, myself included. And I ask you, members of the Council, how would you have reacted at her age, in her situation? I can also understand why she is reluctant to re-join the Order, however much she may want to, and she does, believe me. And until and unless this issue has been resolved, I have no desire to be on the Council, but still speak out on Code reform."

He stepped back from the middle of the half-circle to indicate he had nothing more to say, leaving the Masters to consider what had just happened. Obi Wan had to suppress a smile, it was probably the first time in decades someone had read the Jedi Council the riot act. Anakin on the other hand really had changed. Back in the day it had been that he often believed that the world rotated around him, and that he deserved faster advancement, but now, he seemed to have finally learned that ultimately the needs of the many outweighed the needs of the few, or in his case, the one. He had desperately wanted to be respected by the Jedi, but it seemed he had learned that respect from someone you could not respect in turn was worthless.

Ahsoka was merely a manifestation of this, but he understood why Anakin was so fierce for her.

His former Padawan was not only his sister in the same way Obi Wan was his brother, but had also become a surrogate aunt for the twins. Both Luke and Leia adored her, and Padmé had become very close friends with her as well. Long story short, all the Skywalkers old and young would gladly defend her against anything.

Even though she had never told anyone, Ahsoka was well aware of this, and very humbled by the fact. For the last two years she'd been forced to live with the fact that she had been forsaken by the closest thing to a family she'd ever had, Anakin's furious defence not withstanding, and Obi Wan knew all to well that he bore his fair share of blame for that. He'd made an effort to repair the damage, but ultimately that power lay with the rest of the Council, not him. They needed to reach a collective decision, and Force, he had no idea which one it would be.

It was then that he decided that he would defend Ahsoka as much as he would have Anakin for his breach of the Code had that been necessary, up to and including resigning his seat.

The Council Chamber was deathly silent once more.

Anakin stood in the half-light of the area near the door, where they had yet to install any lamps and felt... not satisfaction, no, but the knowledge that he had finally said the words he'd been carrying around with himself for the last year. Ahsoka deserved nothing less, in his opinion the matter was far more pressing than the onygoing and tiring discussions about the reform of the Code and Jedi Doctrine. He suspected that this was a discussion that would take years to fully resolve, a task not exactly made easier by the other problems they had to solve, such as their immediate survival.

The silence lasted for almost half an hour as the elder Jedi considered the mirror The Chosen One had just held in front of them. And they did not like what they saw. Windu especially blamed himself for what had happened, having been so convinced of his own rectitude and the infallibility of the Order and it's teachings that he had forsaken his basic humanity.

"I think..." he said after the silence became too much for him, "that an apology to former Padawan Tano is in order. It is the least thing we can do. If there are no objections, then I will approach her and offer her to re-join the Order at the rank of a full Knight. Skywalker, will she accept?"

"Would you? She needs to know that you are sincere, that this isn't just being done out of necessity."

Windu could acknowledge Skywalker's wisdom, and the meeting adjourned soon after.

* * *

><p>While this was going on, Padmé was taking the twins for a walk around the colony. She didn't know if it was genetics, their demonstrated force sensitivity, the normal variations usual with children, or a combination of all three, but she was amazed that her children could already walk better and for longer before getting tired than most other humans their age. They had long since outgrown the repulsorlift trolley <em>Fearless<em>' Engineering Department had rigged up when they'd been only days old, to the point where she rarely had to carry them over distances. The colony was spreading out.

As they left the tunnel entrance past two TSF troopers who threw her a snappy salute, she noted that construction efforts outside, on the plateau and immediately in front of the main entrance were picking up. The blast doors to seal off the entrance and the hangars had taken only two days to install, being salvaged from a freighter that had been deemed surplus and was now used for material to establish the colony. All of this would be camouflaged from orbital observation of course, but on ground level, right now, it was something for the twins to gawk at with wide eyes. As one on the Committee, she knew that there was more to it than just habitation. The next run to dispose of some of their loot from that last raid would, for example, include the purchase of at least one, best case two or three large-scale water purifiers and all sorts of equipment they might need for establishing something more or less permanent here. Because if there was one thing that was certain, the Jedi, the civilians, the Fleet personnel, they would all be stuck here for a very long time, supposing they could keep hidden from the Empire.

That part at least was easier than it might seem on the face of things. The planet they'd named Woltei after a figure from Twi'lek mythology, was clear in the opposite direction of where the Republic had thought Chiss space to begin, and scouting of the surrounding systems had revealed no intelligent species, developed or not, and had also failed to show any trace of the _Outbound Flight_, much to Ahsoka's semi-serious dismay.

By the time they reached the top of the cliff, the twins started to tire, so Padmé led them to where some of the other younglings and civilian children were playing under the watchful attention of some of the adults. Ahsoka was one of them. Padmé knew that the young Togrutan liked the younglings, their unreserved and very much mutual adoration making for a needed change from her still undefined status with the Order and the mixed feelings she had to be able to sense from some of the Jedi. The Younglings on the other hand, they always accepted her. Especially Luke and Leia, so when she sat them down and they ran over to their 'aunt', Padmé knew that her children would be in very good hands.

She allowed herself to look away and take in what was going on up here. Beyond her field of vision, about a kilometre away and connected to the main 'settlement' a few of the ex-slaves who had come from more rural worlds were setting farms, even though equipment, seeds and livestock were near non-existent for the moment, and another thing on the very long shopping list the Committee had put together. Some had opposed getting 'too comfortable' on Woltei, but it had been pointed out to everyone that it would be years, if not decades before any Rebellion had a chance to seriously harm the Empire, never mind actually toppling it, and until then, the Republic Remnant was stuck here and needed to be able to feed itself beyond what they could capture, because those easy pickings would not last.

Padmé knew that there also was long-term strategy to consider. Just raiding Imperial supply convoys would win them nothing and doom them to an ultimately doomed defence, quite aside from the manpower problems the Jedi faced. During the last strategy meeting someone had floated destroying the cloning facilities on Kamino as an idea, but it had been Anakin who had shot it down by pointing out that they had only two vessels that could be described as warships, and on those vessels only ten starfighters, and attacking a world as vital to the Empire as that planet would require a force at least four or five times the size unless something happened that diverted Imperial attention elsewhere.

Instead priority would be to establish themselves here so that they could lay low for a while if need be, continue to raid supply convoys, try to increase their fighting force by acquiring more ships and crews and, most importantly, make contact with friends in the Core Worlds, people like Bail Organa or Mon Mothma by means that didn't require a traceable HoloNet link. Coordination and organization would be the key to the destruction of the New Order.

She turned back to the Younglings. In the last years she had been given a far more intimate education in the ways of the Jedi than she'd ever have imagined possible even by being married to one, and the heartwarmingly nurturing way the Creche-Master cared for the Younglings with was a far cry from any of the rumours that were going around about the baby-stealing Jedi. Intellectually, Padmé had known that most of that was hogwash, but seeing it for herself was something else entirely, and she felt honoured. She would still never give up her children to the Order as long as she drew breath, but at least they would have been cared for. As it was, Luke and Leia were still too young to take part in the normal education programme, however torn and damaged it was now that the resources of the Temple had been lost, but she knew that the twins would certainly benefit from it, and she knew that as long as she was allowed to have them back each evening, she would gladly let them have it.

"Senator Skywalker?"

Even though she was no longer a Senator, she still reacted to the title as well as the name, and her husband had promised her that one day he'd say it to her in the Senate Chamber. Speaking of which... "Annie! How did the meeting go?"

Anakin came over and placed one arm around her shoulder, pulling her close. "About as well as can be expected."

He let out a deep breath. "The mission is still on, and... they offered me a seat."

Padmé looked up at him. "Annie, that's great!"

"I declined."

Frowning, Padmé turned in his arm. "By the Force, _why_?"

"Because, my dear Angel, they have yet to really try and fix that." he said, pointing over to where Ahsoka was giving Leia a ride on her shoulders, having the girl and her brother in a fit of giggles. "I also think that I have things of my own to resolve before I deserve that seat."

"Your loyalty does you credit, you know?" Padmé said with a smile and stood up on her toes to give him a kiss on his cheek.

"Of course it does. This is me we are talking about." Anakin said with a grin that made his humour obvious, but he sobered up quickly. "This is by no means altruistic. Our war hasn't ended with the shut-down of the Droid armies, and if I have to take on the Empire, then I want Ahsoka, Obi Wan, you... all of them by my side."

"Besides, it's the right thing to do."

"That of course as well."

The two parents watched how their children were having a ball with their surrogate aunt, all of them, children and parents, utterly unaware of the dangers and adventures that awaited them in the coming years.

**tbc**

**I know that what happened to Ahsoka was done to explain her absence during ROTS, but you can probably imagine how bloody furious I was when I watched the episodes in question, and in some ways I can understand Anakin's dissatisfaction with the Council. Overall I must say that IMO TCW did a sterling job to help set up the events of ROTS.**


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8  
><strong>

"So, what did she say?" Obi Wan asked as Anakin strapped himself into the pilot's seat of the tiny Sullustan Freighter they were to take to meet their 'trader' contact.

"I've never seen her so torn between two things. On one hand Padmé wants to come with us to help with the negotiations, but on the other hand she doesn't want to leave Luke and Leia behind... I can safely say, I understand that."

Obi Wan smiled. "Which is why you are a great father to them, old friend. They adore you, and you adore them."

"Thank you." Anakin replied with a corteous nod, "Still, we made a pact. Until the twins are at least fifty, one of us will always be with them."

Obi Wan knew that his two best friends were only half-joking, and that the pact they'd made was probably the reason why Anakin seemed to be fine with leaving them behind, just as Padmé would eventually have to be. She now had a different set of priorities than when they had first met, but some measure of public service would always be part of her being.

"That is a wise precaution, Anakin." Obi Wan said and checked the readout of the positively ancient Navicomputer in this equally old freighter. "Two minutes to real-space."

"Acknowledged." Anakin replied, preparing to take the controls of the vessel as soon as they exited Hyperspace. "But I don't want her to give up what she always loved to do."

"Anakin, she has other priorities now."

"And so do I." Anakin turned and gave a wary smile. "It's just an irrational worry, because she gave me the exact same reply when I talked to her about it. I'll never know what I did to deserve her, considering what she's been giving up for me. I mean I dragged her away from the lap of luxury on Coruscant, away from her family for...this." He waved at the freighter they were in.

To Obi Wan it was refreshing to see Anakin so humble, but what his former Padawan didn't know was that he'd had a very similar conversation with the Senator, and he couldn't help but smile at the two that had found themselves there.

"Somehow I think she'd rather be here with you and the twins, free and able to fight back against the Emperor than on Coruscant. There she'd only get herself killed.

Anakin didn't reply. He hadn't had any Palpatine-induced nightmares since the Exodus, but the mental image of Padmé dying on that table still made him shudder when he thought of it. Just as Obi Wan was about to say something, Anakin was saved by the bell. "Dropping into normal space now."

The blue swirl of hyperspace turned back into first streaks of light and then the familiar starfield.

Only in this case it was joined by an Imperial Venerator attack cruiser, already spewing out starfighters from it's hangar. The Imperials hadn't been after the two Jedi in the Freighter nor their contact but had instead been hunting one of the Munificent Frigates turned pirate that infested regions of the Outer Rim. It was mere happenstance that the ex CIS crew had fled into this system.

Not that anyone knew or cared. Anakin threw the control yoke forward to evade two V-Wings, diving down below them relative to his own plane of movement. The engine section of their ship barely cleared the two fighters who instantly turned in to follow.

_"Attention civilian freighter. This is the Imperial Star Destroyer Constrictor. We are engaged in anti-piracy operations. Heave to immediately and prepare for inspection."_

The message had come in on standard Imperial frequencies, broad spectrum broadcast, but Anakin flew on as if he hadn't heard it, throttle to the stops and on a least-time course towards the asteroid belt that lay between them and the nearest planet. Realistically, he had no chance of outrunning anything even remotely newer than it's decrepit old sublight engines. Anakin still tried, throwing the ship through as many tight turns and manoeuvres as he dared

"R2, get the turrets on them!"

R2 beeped a negative answer back, telling him that only the dorsal turret was working. Before Anakin could give an order, R2 already had the single puny laser on the lower hull turned and spitting bolts at the pursing V-Wings.

"Obi Wan, what's the composition of that asteroid belt?"

The other Jedi thanked the Force that he had used the seatbelts and checked the sensor readouts, half-suspecting what Anakin was up to. "Anything from your fist up to that cruiser back there."

A near miss jolted the ship. "Anakin, may I suggest that you reconsider what you are about to do?"

"What Master?" Anakin replied without breaking his concentration, "Still don't like my flying?"

"What you're doing is still not flying!"

Anakin said nothing and only grinned as the freighter entered the outer fringes of the field. He used his Force-enhanced senses to help him navigate the field, but even so they kept having impact of smaller stones, weakening the shields.

Luckily the V-Wings didn't follow ad the _Constrictor_ stood off, peppering the field with intense but inaccurate turbo-laser fire. The freighter emerged from the field on the other side, having gained enough time to reach the planetary atmosphere before the pursuit could catch up to them. Except for the additional three V-Wings coming at them from straight ahead. Whether they'd been launched from the planet or wherever didn't really matter. What mattered was the laser fire that impacted into the forward shields even though R2 managed to destroy one of them as they passed.

"Forward deflectors are down!" Obi Wan yelled, even as Anakin slew the freighter around, trying to interpose those shields that were still functional. The futility of trying was demonstrated seconds later when yet another volley collapsed the dorsal shields and ripped into the engine assembly. Another V-Wing exploded. Luckily for the passengers of the ship, the reactor's automatic shutdown functioned as designed. Between manoeuvring thrusters and momentum, he managed to enter the atmosphere, with the lone survivor pulling away.

There was a simple reason for that. The atmosphere of the plant was fairly violent, at least in it's upper reaches, and not even Anakin would have cared to try it in a starfighter. By the time they broke through the layer of storms, they'd taken no less than eleven lightning hits, and even R2 had started to complain about the quality of the flight.

Looking at the array of warning lights on his controls, Anakin had Obi Wan start looking for a landing site.

They passed over what seemed to be an endless empty grassland, even as Anakin tried to keep the nose of the ship up until speed had been reduced enough for a safe-ish crash. He still almost managed to hit the only group of tree-like plants for miles around.

He had definitely taken some of the top off, but then the hull scraped the ground, and they were thrown about inside it. Obi Wan and Anakin had been in seatbelts, but R2 not, so he screeched as he was thrown into the locked that contained the cleaning supplies. When the freighter came to a stop at the end of a three-quarters kilometre furrow it had dug into the ground, he started to complain that those ships never made a provision for droids.

"Anakin, you were shot down _again_." Obi Wan said and shook his head while his former Padawan extracted R2 from the cleaning supplies the droid had become tangled up in.

"So the lightning strikes that fried the repulsorlifts are my fault?"

"Well no," Obi Wain replied in the same humorous tone, "but your little stunt in the asteroid field certainly didn't help."

"I will not dignify that with a response."

R2 had no such problems.

"Oh shut up. I'm tempted to leave you in there for someone else to be bothered with."

The indignant reply needed no translation.

Once they exited the smouldering wreck of the freigher, they turned serious again. "The nearest spaceport should be about a fifteen-hundred klicks that way." Anakin said and pointed to roughly north-west. "And of course there is a river and something of an interior ocean in the way."

"So where should we go? We do have something of a deadline after all."

Obi Wan had taken some Ebinocs from the ship's emergency locker, and climbed as far up the hull as he could without a ladder. "Nothing to see but those trees you insisted we clip. Nothing but grass and even more grass. This is about as remote as it gets on this world."

It was R2 who solved their problem for them. He retracted the scanner into his dome and beeped suggestion. Anakin turned towards him. "What makes you think there are settlements over there?"

A series of beeps followed, telling Anakin that R2 had detected a short-range transmission that indicated that the settlement used automated machinery to tend the fields that surrounded the town.

Obi Wan jumped down and joined them as Anakin translated for him.

"That suggests some wealth."

"And a vehicle we might be able to.. get. How far away, R2?"

"Thirty kilometres?" Obi Wan asked, "Are you sure you can make it, R2?"

The droid's answer had Anakin in stitches and Obi Wan indignant. "I am not an old fossil!"

With a jaunty, dismissive beep, R2 set off over the grassland.

* * *

><p>By the time they reached the outer ring of fields, a few kilometres from the town itself, it was already getting dark. They could still see the bulky droid farm machines harvesting some sort of shoulder-high crop vaguely reminiscent of mushrooms, but with leaves like an ordinary bush. However there was not a single sentient being in sight until two locals on elderly speeder bikes came racing towards them down the road they were walking along. Both Jedi wore non-descript light brown capes with robes that could have come from any number of worlds, a setup that was fast becoming the unofficial dress code for off-world Jedi, so could have come from any number of worlds. Since Anakin's face might still be too recognizable, he had dyed his hair black and added a fake scar that ran from his left eye down his cheek before fading out near his chin.<p>

Neither of those that approached them seemed to be force-sensitive, so there was no danger from that end, but both also seemed to be very suspicious.

What was more, they were also armed with cast-off separatist blaster rifles.

"Who are you?"

"I am Captain Hooge of the freighter _Star's Gift_, this is my co-pilot Amadis." Anakin said with a respectful nod, "and this there is our navigation droid. You may have seen a ship coming to crash earlier this afternoon?"

"That was you?" the presumed leader of the patrol said, and the two looked at each other. "You were hit by the pirates?"

So they had heard the official story. There was a chance that they would turn them in, but some risks needed to be taken. They had discussed this on the way here, and Obi Wan had expressed his doubts that the Empire would release anything like an accurate report. There hadn't even been any search party they'd been able to see, so it was likely that the Star Destroyer's commander had given them up for dead, or simply wanted to hunt his actual prey. Whatever the reason, they had made up a story, just in case.

"We don't really know. We came out of hyper and suddenly there was laser blasts everywhere. No idea who actually hit us, since the first thing we lost was the main computer and all the sensor recordings. We did kind of hope that your town had some sort of transport to the nearest spaceport available."

The leader contemplated the two dusty, tired men and their droid. After what seemed like an eternity to the two Jedi he smiled.

"We can't take you into town, we still have our rounds to do. But it's only a few clicks now, you should be there in half an hour."

With that they took off down the road.

"I bet you five credits that they check out the wreck."

"I may be old, but I'm not stupid. Find someone else." Obi Wan said with a grin. "I take it you slagged the computers before we left?"

"And the comm system. I set the thermal charges and detonated them. The hold was empty, so there shouldn't be anything that might give them a clue as to where we're really from."

"Let's hope so, Anakin, let's hope so."

No more words were exchanged until they saw the first signs of habitation. As they crested a hill, they could see a quaint little town of maybe a hundred-thousand inhabitants nestled into a low valley along a river that was on the small side but apparently still large enough to support this kind of settlement and a good sized industry that probably dealt with what the surrounding fields produced. Rivertown, judging by the sign near the road, may not be imaginatively named, but it was prosperous, and that meant, much to their delight, that there was a small facility on the other side of town, on the edge of the valley that catered to light freighters and speeders from the larger settlements on this planet.

"I'd say that our problems are solved, though getting transport off-world will be rather expensive." Obi Wan said, referring to the paltry credit pouch each of them carried. "Unless of course we steal a transport."

"Hadn't you heard, Master? We are rebels and pirates now." Anakin said, though the smile seemed fake.

"Still doesn't mean I like having to steal."

The walk into the town was a pleasant one. The road snaked it's way down through low-hanging fruit orchards at first but then through a neighbourhood that, since it was facing sunrise every morning, catered to the more wealthy sections of those living in this town. Not that that meant too much, because the signs of considerable activity of the considerably illegal variety were there. Flashy vehicles in front of dwellings that stood in no proportion to the wealth displayed, a distinct lack of Imperial patrols even though this was supposed to be a key agricultural world of this section of the Outer Rim, and as they got closer to the centre of town, far more pedestrians than what could be explained by the predominantly human residents.

Obi Wan knew that it had been this way since long before the rise of the Empire. The self-aggrandizing and haughty way many of the Core Worlds and their residents looked on the Rim Worlds with did it's own to further a casual disregard for anything that came from Coruscant, not the least laws and law enforcement. One of the many reasons that had made it easier for the Clone War to break out. The friction between Rim and Core had long since been an issue, but most senators hadn't cared enough about 'inbred backwater yokels' to do something about it. Hence why many systems, even human settled ones, had sympathized with or outright cooperated with the Separatists.

At the moment this worked to their advantage, as Imperial scrutiny of Rim Words like this one was not much higher than what it had been under the Old Republic. The local planetary government seemed to have the hands-off approach that many of the poorer Rim Worlds used to boost their economy. Rivertown seemed to be one of those that could and did turn out an honest living but considered it too small so augmented it with illegal trade.

Anakin seemed to have had a similar thought.

"I wonder why the contact point was not here and instead in one of their regional administrative centres."

"You'd have to ask my contact for that, he was the one who requested it there, in spite of the heightened presence by their security forces, such as they are."

"Could it have been a trap?"

Obi Wan shook his head as they walked across one of the bridges over the river that also neatly kept residential from industrial areas.

"I don't know, Anakin. But at the same time, our not arriving on time is bound to have thrown said trap, if there indeed is one, severely out of order. You know as well as I do that most planetary security forces can't afford to sit still for any length of time, and no, not even the Empire can. Maybe our initial reception was part of it."

"I doubt it. The impression I got was that they really were hunting pirates, and not what has to look like random smugglers like the two of us. Besides, how were they supposed to know where we came out of hyperspace?"

"I still have a bad feeling. Let's be on our guard."

Like any other spaceport in settled space, this one was surrounded by the usual collection of bars, shops and garages that catered to the spacers and their vehicles, and it shouldn't be too hard to procure transport to the capital or off-world, because one thing was sure, the two Jedi would not try to make the meet without anything to transport the cargo with. Without speaking about it, they had resolved that they would not return to the colony empty-handed. Not that the seeds they wanted to buy were vital, or even illegal, but if you had to get your cargo without anyone knowing about it, the shady elements of the galaxy were your only real bet.

And as usual, the best of the pilots that would take anyone with 'Imperial entanglements' onto their ship would also be found in the bars surrounding the spaceport.

The two Jedi searched for one that had the right composition of seediness and class, and was frequented by pilots that might be criminals but honest enough to not shoot their passengers in the back at the first turn. "Let's try this one." Obi Wan said and stepped into the open entrance door of an establishment that had one of the local birds of prey on it's sign, in corner of the poorer parts of the district around the port.

They barely had the chance to avoid the dismembered furniture that came flying their way.

The cantina fight going on already nearly made them turn around and leave, but before it happened, one of the heavily drunk patrons slammed into Obi Wan after tumbling over R2. The droid beeped angrily and parked himself near the entrance, but Anakin was too busy shoving the drunkard away.

He turned towards the two newcomers. "You spilleud mhy drink!"

A slow right fist came towards Anakin's head but he dodged that one easily. Still the delay was enough for some of the drunkard's friends to decided that the two newcomers had taken sides, and soon enough the two Jedi were involved in an old-fashioned fight, trying not inadvertently kill someone with their far superior hand-to-hand combat skills.

Between them and a single scraggy human fighting half-stuck in a booth, they soon cleared the drunkards out.

"My profound thank you to you, Gentlemen."

The man was about Obi Wan's height, blonde hair and blue eyes. He gave a respectful nod.  
>"What was all that about?"<p>

The man gave a derisive snort. "If only it had been something worthwhile, like a lady. But no, at first it was because one of them was already as drunk as a stormie on payday and claimed I'd stolen his seat. I would have left gladly, but I suspect by then he was too clobbered to understand anything. One thing lead to another and I was defending myself against him and three of his friends. Somehow that then turned into the mess you saw. That being said, we should leave before what passes for police around here arrives."

Once out on the street, the three turned a random corner and could hear the arrival of local law enforcement. They exchanged idle chit-chat as they walked nowhere in particular. Their new friend learned that they had crashed after 'pirates' had shot them down and they now needed transport. Anakin and Obi Wan learned their sudden companion turned out to be an "honest" trader from Nar Shaddaa named who had lost his co-pilot a few months ago when the man had repaired key systems aboard their ship while in hyperspace. He had succeeded, but hit hit his head on an edge when the pilot had been forced to make radical turns the instant after coming out of hyperspace to avoid crashing into someone else.

"He was dead before I knew he'd hit his head. What with the Republic Group after us and Palpatine's New Order I repaired what was still broken, turned everything I could into money and left as fast as her engines would take me."

"I must ask." Obi Wan said after exchanging glances with Anakin, "Why are you telling us all this?"

"Because those pirates of yours probably had their ship painted in a really boring grey, and like to wear snazzy uniforms and black pilot suits? And because you may want to avoid any... imperial entanglements?"

When no answer was forthcoming, he laughed. "Anyway, you won't find those seeds you need around here. They don't allow of-world crops to be even traded, and what with the grasscrawler mushrooms there's no need for them anyway. But I'm going to the Corporate sector. Take a ride with me, you'll find what you need there, and a ship back to wherever it is you're coming from."

It was a good offer, because they wouldn't need to use their scarce credits, and neither Jedi sensed any duplicity.

"We'll be glad."

"Meet me in half an hour near my ship. She's Corellian, the _Stellar Envoy_."

** tbc**


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9**

"You came in _that_? You're braver than I thought."

The _Stellar Envoy_ hovered over where their freighter had crashed, and Anakin, perched in the co-pilot's seat, nodded. "In my defence," he said, "she didn't look quite like that when we arrived in the system. And I didn't have the time to modify her before we set off."

"Fair enough." Jada replied and set the ship up on her end before firing the main engines and taking them out of the atmosphere. What had made Anakin ask for this sort of fly-by was none of his businessmen, but he suspected it was because the younger of his two passengers wanted to know if someone Imperial had shown interest in the wreck. That hadn't been the case, so everyone on board now had a vested interest to be as far away as possible from here in case that changed. Besides, there was little more than charred metal left.

The YT-1300 pierced the atmosphere of the planet and quickly left the gravity well behind. The jump to hyperspace was routine, and when it was executed, Anakin left the pilot to his work and joined Obi Wan in the main hold. He found the elder Jedi sitting on a chair to the side of the Engineering station, staring intently at the area to the left of the holochess table. Anakin sensed a mixture of dread, regret and gratefulness. Odd enough for him to ask.

"What is it, brother?"

"I don't know." came the reply. "I was sleeping and... a vision?" His voice was low lest the Captain hear them.

He shook his head to chase away the pictures of an older Luke clumsily fighting a training droid with Anakin's lightsabre, of a cheeky smuggler denying the mere existence of the Force, a million voices of the Force crying out in sheer unmeasurable agony and the worst thing of all, that somehow this had all been Anakin's fault. In his heart he knew that it was from the horrible future hid old Master had told him about, and as an inquiring, worried Anakin looked at him, he couldn't help but try to find the Dark Lord of the Sith in those eyes.

When he could not and instead saw only friendly worry, he let those feelings flow away into the Force. Anakin was here, Anakin had not fallen to the Dark Side, nor would he as long as he, Obi Wan, drew breath. Padmé was alive, as were the twins who in the real world had a loving family and the entirety of the Order to raise and protect them.

So he rose from the suddenly uncomfortable seat and stepped over to where the corridor bent itself around the power core. He wanted to talk to Anakin about what he'd seen, but this definitely was not the time to do it, even though he felt strangely protected and invincible on this ship.

"Later, perhaps, old friend. The old friend who was with us when we first met, he gave me something to think about when I talked to him just after our... move from Coruscant."

Anakin's eyebrows rose, but he declined to speak. He didn't feel anything special about this ship, except that maybe in the hands of someone who appreciated and loved her properly, _Stellar Envoy_ might once do great things.

"Well, I am looking forward to it then. I think."  
>Anakin walked away and explored the ship. In a narrow area he stumbled over a toolkit and touched both sides of the corridor at once.<p>

* * *

><p><em>Leia could not stand sitting around, so she had decided to go and help repair the Falcon. Usually welding broken fittings wasn't her cup of tea, but with that nerfherder up to his armpits in the remains of the hyperdrive motivator and his furry friend trying to help.<em>__

_The part was now as it had been. Placing the welding torch back in it's case and removing the goggles, Leia klicked it back into place. Somehow she sensed his approach and studiously ignored him. She reached down to turn the fitting back into it's place, but of course the blasted thing chose now to be stuck._

_He stepped closer and reached around her, apparently in order to do her part for her. In a sudden fit of annoyance, Leia shoved him away with her shoulders._

_"Hey, Worship! I'm only tryin' to help!"_

_She half-turned while still trying to turn the thing. "Would you please stop... _calling_ me that?"_

_He stepped back. "Sure... yeah..."_

_"You know, you make it so difficult sometimes."_

_"I do, I really do. You could be a little nicer though sometimes."_

_"Come on, admit it. Sometimes you think I'm all right."_

_Leia cut herself on a sharp edge. She suppressed a curse and._

_"Occasionally, Maybe.."_

_She had turned and he came close. Dangerously close._

_"When you're not acting like a scoundrel."_

_He took and massaged her hand, face a perfect picture of innocence._

_"Scoundrel?"_

_He came closer again, now grinning, and her knees began to shudder._

_"I like the sound of that."_

_"Stop that." Leia said, and of course he did nothing of the sort._

_"Stop what?"_

_"Stop that. My hands are dirty."_

_"My hands are dirty too. What're you afraid of?"_

_"Afraid?" she asked with more ridicule than she actually felt. He came still closer._

_"You're trembling."_

_"I'm not trembling." Leia replied, shaking her head emphatically._

_"You like me because I'm a scoundrel. There aren't enough scoundrels in your life."_

_She was only whispering now. "I happen to like nice men."_

_"I'm a nice man."_

_"No you're not. You're..."_

_She never finished the sentence as he kissed her. She kissed him back._

* * *

><p>Anakin tried to shake the disturbing images out of his head. "That's it. No Corellians anywhere near my daughter. Ever."<p>

What was it with this ship?

He went back to the others and sat down in the small rotunda behind the table and steepled his fingers under his chin, trying to meditate without being obvious about it.

R2 joined him.

"So buddy, want to play?"

* * *

><p>They reached the Corporate Sector fairly quickly and parted ways with Jada who had refused payment once again. As the capital of the Corporate Sector Authority, Etti IV was about as far removed from Woltei as it was possible. As they walked through the streets towards a sector of the city where Jada had said they would find what they needed, Anakin couldn't help but compare some aspects of it's weather with Tatooine, and Obi Wan knew that it wasn't a compliment.<p>

Neither of them had been here before, even though on a mission a few years before the start of the Clone War they had been on the edges of the Corporate Sector, and the way it had been run then had not endeared it to the two Jedi. It seemed that either things had escalated very quickly now that the extremely hands-off Empire had supplanted the Republic that had originally exiled the corporations or Etti IV was just the dark heart of it all.

Still, almost every species either had ever even heard of and then some was to be found here, and two more humans wouldn't get any sort of unwanted attention. Except of course from the pick-pockets. By the time they had reached their rough destination, Anakin had counted seven attempts, none successful.

"It seems he was right, Ani." Obi Wan said, using the supposed first name of Anakin's alter ego.

"True, but let me ask you this, how big is the chance that whoever we end up dealing with will try to take advantage of two backwater farmers?"

"It's not a chance, a certainty. Still, this is the best chance we have to get both our cargo and some sort of cheap transport."

"Cheap, reliable and quickly. Pick two."

Obi Wan grinned, it was an engineer's axiom that Anakin had picked up somewhere during his fourth year as a Padawan, and he still used it occasionally.

"I know why we can't do it, but I wish we could hire a pilot. It would be a lot cheaper than to just buy or... borrow a ship."

"Agreed. And I'd never thought I would say this, but it may come down to the second option when it comes to transportation. Have you looked at these prices?"

They had stopped in front of what seemed to be the office of a stock broker, and on front of the building a holo displayed the current local prices for the the most common commodities.

Anakin joined Obi Wan in his examination of the holo. "These are the official prices. There is always a certain amount of negotiations involved. Besides, I do seem to recall a certain person of our mutual acquaintance who tried to pull a certain something on a certain Toydarian some eleven years ago on a really hot and sandy planet..."

He trailed off, sensing Obi Wan's discomfort at using the Force to manipulate someone out of their money. Anakin wasn't suggesting not paying at all, but they didn't have a choice.

"Well, at least this time we know what to look out for. Who knew they wouldn't fall for that one."

"If we want to do this we should to to one of the middling vendors. They can afford not getting quite as much and aren't too big to be above haggling."

"Again, agreed."

It took them another half hour to find a vendor for all things farming that fit their criteria and who wasn't prone to asking too many questions as long as the credits were there. In fact said vendor was, for reasons he refused to give and that neither Jedi really cared to find out, desperate to sell off the three stasis large-volume containers full of Corellian Grain seeds and even attempted to throw in an ownerless and thus probably stolen farming droid. The Jedi politely refused, paid for their grain and went to inspect the warehouse it was in. The wares were there, and a quick inspection revealed they had not been cheated.

Procuring transport that could be had on their terms and conditions proved to be far harder. An hour later they had yet to find something that was in their price range but also large enough and in any sort of shape to make the long trip back. They could have used Force suggestion to get what they wanted, but there was a chance that if they started this, it might leave behind a trail of bad deals for someone to follow, and of course the only dealer who had something approaching to what they needed was a Toydarian. Footsore, tired and in the case of Anakin also very, very hungry, they turned off the street that contained at least another dozen used ship lots into a side alley and headed for a small eatery that seemed clean enough and served predominantly Core World's cuisine. That suited the both of them just fine, for both Coruscant had been the closest thing to home, and some of it's eclectic local cuisine had found it's way here, even though some of the ingredients were non-standard.

They chose a booth that gave them a good view of the only door into the establishment and would need someone standing almost directly beside them to see properly who was sitting here. It was then, without even wanting or trying to, they overheard something that would change the course of the Rebellion.

The two sentients were Human, both male and in their late thirties, one blonde, the other with black hair.. At first, the two Jedi ignored them as they concentrated on their food, but then the two newcomers spoke words that were worth listening to.

"...ly a rumour! Even so, we have to get there before they do!"

"Sithspit, Jona, even if it isn't true, the chance of a fully equipped CIS depot is to good to pass up!" It was blonde who spoke.

"Maybe true, but what's to say the Imps aren't sitting on top of it to smoke out people like us?"

"With a system that close to Hutt Space? I doubt it. They'd have to have a Task Force sitting on the system for months on end when they could be out hunting rebels. The Hutts would..."

They talked in a lower voice, and Anakin looked at Obi Wan. He wished that they'd told them where that system was. 'Near Hutt space' was still a fairly big area, and the Republic Remnant just didn't have the resources for an extended search operation. With an extended index finger he just pointed at his head. He could sense Obi Wan's uncertainty and worry over their Force bond, but using his gift for this questionable purpose was the best chance they had at getting the information they needed. Hopefully both the men were of weak mind.

Anakin closed his eyes and reached out into the Force towards Blonde's mind. _'I want you to tell me everything you know about the system.'_

"Why don't you yell even louder, I don't think everyone has heard you."

_'I still want to know everything.'_

"I'll take us there, don't you worry."

It was obvious that he had no intention of sharing the profits once he had done so, and both Jedi sensed it.

_'I still want to know.'_

The other sighed. "I said I will tell you when we get there, and that is enough. I know how long you wanted a few B2s, so would I lie to you, the person I cannot do this without?"

Obi Wan sighed with defeat and waved his hands as well.

_'These aren't the droids you're looking for.'_

When Anakin looked at him with a puzzled frown, and Obi Wan shrugged apologetically.

They left ten minutes later with a wealth of information and now convinced that they had a real chance at getting a real depot, leaving two puzzled men behind who suddenly had the strong urge to go home and rethink their lives.

For Anakin and Obi Wan it seemed as if things had changed all of a sudden, because they both felt a sense of urgency at this information. Both felt as if they had lead to this place by the Force, and in any case, there was a need for acting fast. It was Obi Wan who 'suggested' to the human used ship dealer that parting with the small light freighter for less than half of what he had originally asked for it, and so they left the planet for home half a day later.

Both sensed that there was more to this than a mere forgotten CIS weapons depot. Unlike the two rouges they could not dismiss the idea of a trap that easily.

**tbc**

** She may not be the Falcon yet, but at least I don't have to waste time describing the interior. In regards to all those non-standard mods, according to the Han Solo trilogy most of what makes her the _Millenium Falcon_ was added when she had come into Han's possession in/after 2.5 BBY. While I'm not necessarily going to follow that, she remains a near-factory standard YT-1300 for the moment. Her cameo may have been short, but rest assured, we will see her again.**

** As for the prospect of Anakin and Obi Wan discussing the events of the original trilogy... Part of that is my desire to have a real, non-force-cave-on-Dagobah-induced showdown between my version of Anakin Skywalker and the canon Darth Vader. Since dimensional travel is much rarer than in, say, that other franchise, it's probably not going to happen. Another part is that I believe that this version of Anakin has at least a vague sense of what would have happened. He's many things, but being stupid is not among them.**

** In regards to the mind trick as shown here, the impression I have from the original trilogy and TPM is that either you can do only single-sentence suggestions or this is how it works best. **  
><strong><br>That being said, I'm not at all happy with how this one turned out. Not at all. Part of this me having rewritten a substantial part of the plot outline in the middle of this. I did re-write and rethink several sections of this over the weekend, but I just can't get it done properly.**

** The changes made were caused both by the feedback given to me by you, my small but loyal readership as well as some things I considered after reading some SW comics the other day.**

** It's also the reason why this one is comparatively short.**


	10. Chapter 10

**Better now?**

**Chapter 10**

When her small one-man scout ship came out of hyperspace near her target planet, she noted immediately that the planet Grievous was on was surrounded by a hodge-podge mix of all types of Confederate warships, from Geonosian-built and Vulture-class starfighters up to no less than four Providence-Class cruisers, though even without using active sensors she could tell that one of them seemed to be barely spaceworthy, probably still nursing damage from the battle of Coruscant. She would barely admit it to herself, let alone anyone else, but she was impressed at the fleet the general had managed to assemble. Unfortunately it was probably no coincidence that the system lacked any sort of asteroid belts or nebulae that she could have used to sneak close enough to reach the surface.

Yet another defensive measure, and a good one too. So while she decided what to do, she parked her ship in a crater on the planetside hemisphere of a tidally locked moon with a solid iron core, shut down all power except for emergency life support and waited.

She had learned a hard lesson on Byss, that even a Sith sometimes had to be patient. Her batteries would last about two days, and by then she would have a plan.

So she waited and waited and waited.

The patrol patterns they used were standard CIS procedure it seemed, and they never varied from that. At the same time there was the usual predictability that came with routine.

Patrols could be out-thought, but scanner arrays often not. With only her eyes and a few low-power passive systems finding out what sort of an orbital surveillance network there was on this world was next to impossible. Even if she coasted in to mimick a meteorite there needed to be a plausible place for one to come from.

Then of course there was the direct method, get as close as possible as without being detected and then shunt every erg of energy to the drive and the shields, blowing through and hopefully landing on the surface without being shot down. It threw away surprise, but at the same time it also would prove to be more of a challenge. The more she challenged herself during this final test, the bigger the chance that Sidious would make her a true Sith.

She waited another twenty minutes before the right window of the least density of patrols once more played out in front of her before re-activating her systems and throwing the ship into it's final run. She was detected as soon as she left the moon's magnetic field, but right now only a Wavecrest and a single Munificent were between her and the planet, and she smiled under her pilot's helmet. The marksmanship of the droid and biological crews on the ships was as good as ever, but her scout was barely large enough to house a hyperdrive and shields, being only about two thirds the size of an ARC-170, and she was having it in the sort of evasive manoeuvres that would make the best pilot in the Galaxy proud.

Even so, several shots came dangerously close or grazed her shields, and she was glad once she had reached the atmosphere where the ships couldn't follow and she was able to use the ionization of the upper troposphere to help obscure her. She made a mental note to have the best stealth systems possible fitted to whatever ship she left this planet with. As per the plans Sidious had given her, she saw the compound where Grievous was supposedly hiding at the end of a narrow, deep valley. The sides were peppered with AA emplacements and of course they all chose to use her as target practice. The sublight engines on her ship were brand new, she was fast enough that the targeting systems of the emplacements did not have time to lock on before she was past their firing arc.

She still took hits as the computers just did things the oldfashioned way and led her speeding craft as manual as they were able. As she approached the main gate to the complex she did not halt. She had no intention of landing the craft on the utterly explosed platform and then cross fifty metres of walkway with not even a hint of a railing all exposed to what were probably thousands of blasters in all sorts of forms and sizes.

No, if she had to drop in unannounced, why not knock at the door?

The ship's nose crumbled as it's own momentum and mass slammed it into and through the massive main gate and the company of B1 droids assembled behind it. What remained of the massive guard force on and around the walled-in square opened fire at once, but no one emerged from the shattered hull at first, so eventually they stopped. Overlooking the square was Grievous himself, standing on a platform made out of native stone from which the ancient rulers who had this compound constructed eons ago had once dispensed their form of justice. He took a tentative step forward as silence reigned.

This was shattered as the battered hatch suddenly flew outwards, smashing a few droids before clattering to a halt.

However universal attention was on the black-clad figure that came jumping out in a salto, igniting a deep red lightsabre and landing gracefully with one arm to steady itself in one fluid motion. The figure rose to it's feet and Grievous stepped forward to the very edge of the platform.

With it's free hand, the figure removed the cloak that obscured it.

"Who are you?"

The figure, a female human, spoke.

"I am Raik Muun, and you are dead, _General_." she replied, the last word dripping with sarcasm.

A droid came flying at Grievous, missing him only because one of it's arms got caught by the edge of the platform. He dashed back inside as fast as his body would allow, while Muun cursed his reaction time and began slicing her way towards the entrance to the old castle itself on the far side of the square, the space between it and her thick with droids.

Her sabre was swinging left and right, cutting her way through droids as she went. Some she picked up and flung back towards the others with the Force. The droids tried their best, but they could not stop the prospective Sith from reaching the doorway that led inside. There she was confronted by a durasteel gate that was of far newer construction than the rest of the place. Not able or willing to waste time both because the remaining droids in the square still attacked her, she turned to clear the rest of them out. By now only about a dozen or so B1s were still in fighting order, and it did not take her long to dispatch of them.

Once that was done, Muun turned and cut into the electromagnetic lock with her sabre. She turned it and cut a white hot glowing circle that melted the circuits that kept the door closed, both from the heat and the sheer, raw energy of her weapon. It hissed open and she ran through. The few droids on immediate gate guard were no match for her, and she moved deeper into the caverns and corridors.

From the scans she'd made during her approach she knew that the hangar and the General's escape shuttle were thirty-six floors up, so she had to hurry if she was to prevent him from fleeing the planet. As she passed a control room four flights of stairs up from the square, she ducked into it. Only a few easily killed native inhabitants of the planet were on duty, so she made one of them shut down and then fully disable the lift system before she broke his neck with the force and flung the corpse into one of the consoles.

She didn't delude herself into thinking that it would hold up Grievous for long, or that the lifts might stay deactivated, but it certainly gained her some time to reach the hangar. Before leaving the room, she called up a full layout of the place and transferred it to her datapad. The hangar was where she knew it to be, but the staircases that led upwards were both too narrow and to slow as a means of conveyance.

The plans showed an older spiral staircase, one that was about three times as wide as the others. It was earmarked for reconstruction into a freight elevator as it gave easy access to every level it touched. She went there, slaughtering droids and locals as she went.

As it turned out, the shaft was mostly stripped of what had remained of the staircase, but enough stubs and bits remained that the droids hadn't gotten around to yet, so she used the Force to jump from outcropping to stub to outcropping, making her way upwards far faster than any non-sensitive. It didn't help when half a dozen spider droids came walking down the shaft's wall towards her, firing as they went. They didn't pose much of a problem, but they were a critical delay.

She easily dispatched them, but they had still delayed her by almost a minute.

Upon reaching Level 37, she encountered no droids at first, as apparently whoever commanded the defences seemed to have missed her getting out of the shaft. That changed quickly, and soon she was back to destroying groups of droids that came at her from from seemingly every nook and cranny. She used her anger at their impertinence to fuel her connection to the Dark Side. Doing this had served her well in the past, and it did so now. Sensing the subject of her anger, the being who sent these droids against her, she found that Grievous was dangerously close to the escape shuttle. If he made it he would not only be taking his fleet and be on the run for the rest of time, it also meant that his fleet would reduce the place to molten slag, which he had undoubtedly already ordered it to do. Without using his shuttle, she would be destroyed with it.

Time to take proactive measures. According to the floorplan, she was only about a hundred metres away from the hangar, but the layout of the corridors meant that she would likely reach it just after the General.

So she made her own door in the wall using her sabre, stepped through and so cut her way through the maze of rooms.

The shuttle was still there when she breached the hangar, so she hid herself in the shadows, placed the piece of wall she'd cut out back so that it wouldn't be noticed immediately and waited.

Grievous appeared less than a minute later, flanked by two Assassin droids that functioned as his body guards. Or at least they would have, had Muun not used the Force to push them into the void of the hangar's opening the moment Grievous walked past her.

She snapped on her sabre and attacked.

Since she was between him and the shuttle, Grievous jumped back towards where he had come from, ignited two of his own sabres and said: "So, you are the Emperor's newest pet, I take it? A Jedi who survived the purge?"

"It's nothing to you, you will still die."

Muun charged him and Grievous only barely managed to block her first stroke with the sabre in his right hand. He would never know, but she had put those long months in the Emperor's fortress to good use.

For the next ten minutes the fight dissolved into a blurr of stroke, counterstroke, of feints and tricks that someone not experienced with it all could never have followed, but Grievous was still a very good swordsman. Muun restricted herself to Form IV for the moment, as she had yet to master the Form VII that the Order had developed in recent years. Still, she was so good at it that Grievous was unable to push his advantage. Both opponents realized that this could not go on forever, so he tried to jump back out of her reach, but Muun pulled an empty fuel drum from near the far wall and threw it at him. Grievous managed to dodge it, but to do it, he had to divert his attention for a split second. Muun used this and managed to cut off one of his arms near where it joined his robotic body. That left Grievous with his other two half-arms, but left his right side wide open to attack. Since he couldn't feel the pain of the loss, he merely jumped away out of her immediate reach.

"Surrender now, Grievous, and I shall make it quick. One slice of the sword, and it is over."

"Why should I do that, Child?" he mocked, "Even with one arm I can still easily defeat you."

Out came two more sabres, but Muun remained unfazed. She knew that Grievous was at a disadvantage, but she made a mental note to look into constructing a second one for herself. Right now she would have to make do with the one she had.

"Then come and try, General." she said, with an equally mocking, dripping tone of voice, "I am growing bored of this charade."

They went at it again and once again fought each to the best of their abilities. It was obvious to her though that Grievous was impaired. He obviously favoured his bad side, but he also seemed to be less co-ordinated than earlier. This could of course be because he was used to fighting in a different way, or because he had damage she could not see. In any event, she really was growing weary of this fight and decided to make an all-in push to end it. Taking advantage of Grievous' somewhat reduced reaction time, she feinted to the side where his arm was missing, then used the Force to jump over to his other one when Grievous began to turn to meet her move.

Muun somersaulted and turned in the air so that she faced his back even as he tried turning around. Her sabre was out before she even landed, cutting deep into the General's cybernetic body. He was dead before he fell to the ground.

She severed his head for good measure, and then everything went quickly.

Muun quickly cracked the security code on the escape shuttle, but before she left there was something she needed to do. Ignoring the danger from the orbital fleet and the droids alike, she made her way to the General's quarters. It was no coincidence that they were located on the same level, only a few hundred metres away. The security measures could not stand up to her sabre, and as she literally kicked down the remnants of the door, she immediately saw what she was looking for. The display case with the Lightsabres of Grievous' collection was more unwieldy than it was heavy, and it was only a matter of second for her to break it out of it's fastenings on the wall. Balancing it in front of her with the Force, she returned to the hangar. Grievous' body was where she had left it, and she only paused to gather up the sabres he'd dropped during the course of the fight. She placed them in their spots in the display case and stowed the collection in the small cargo bay at the back of the craft.

Inside she took a moment to adjust the seat so that she could reach all the controls before firing up the systems. As it turned out, the hangar was secured by a containment field that required a personalized access code to deactivate. Normally at least. Muun was more willing to use a permanent solution and used one of the chin-mounted laser cannons to blow away the emitters and pushed the throttles to their stops.

She shot out of the hangar just ahead of the explosion she had caused and flew away. She decided not to run the gauntlet again and instead rose out of the valley and fled north-west into the mountains, hugging the terrain as she went. Sure enough, seconds after she was far enough away, the first turbo-laser bolts came in from orbit as the now leaderless CIS remnant fleet began to bombard the compound. Muun didn't know or even care if they knew that Grievous was dead, what counted was that it seemed they hadn't detected the shuttle. Fife minutes later she landed the shuttle under a massive overhang and decided to wait for a few hours. By then parts of the fleet would either be shooting at each other to gain dominance over what was left or have begun to disperse into the four corners of the Galaxy.

It turned out that she had been right both ways. When she rose out of the atmosphere six hours later, the fleet was gone, save for the wreckage of several ships that hadn't been there before. She smiled. Those not of the Force were so predictable...

Hyperspace brought a welcome relief from danger and the chance to sleep.

* * *

><p>She dropped back into normal space about six hours out from Imperial Centre and activated the hypercomm unit that Grievous had had installed as part of the refit.<p>

The holo coalesced into a blue-tinted representation of the Emperor.

_"Is it done?"_ he asked without bothering with smalltalk.

Muun nodded respectfully. "Yes, My Lord. Grievous is dead, his fortress destroyed and his fleet seems to have scattered into the four winds."

_"Good, good. I would have preferred if you had not managed to create hundreds of new pirates for my fleet to hunt down, but at least you managed that much."_

She ignored the jibe and nodded again.

"What do you wish me to do, My Lord?"

Sidious paused for a second. _"Return to Imperial Centre and come see me in my office. We have much to talk about."_

The figure dissolved and Muun leaned back in her chair. This was as close as Sidious was likely to get to actual praise, and she found that she liked it. Damn the Jedi, the Sith appreciated her.

**tbc**

** What is it with the GFFA and the lack of railings? I mean is there a religious belief against them? Have they never been invented?**

** As for Muun, what I wanted was a female Character because it makes a better counterpoint to Anakin and canon!Vader. Besides, I have yet to see that one done, Ventress aside.**

** The fight with Grievous: It's not that she's a better swordsman than Obi Wan, (though she's very close) but more that she got lucky in a way that Obi Wan didn't when she managed to cut off his army by accident.**


	11. Chapter 11

**I am, in parts at least, somewhat worried about this one. Some of what's going on here is in it because I felt it was the right place, and wasn't actually supposed to happen until later on.**

**Chapter 11**

This time the Jedi Council did not meet in their normal chamber. If they had not been Force users they would have considered it coincidence that they all slowly drifted towards the wide room that functioned as the Order's crèche for the few very small younglings. They all stood in the wide corridor in front of the one-way observation window Fleet Engineers had fitted this morning and looked at the future of their Order. For most of them this was the only family they remembered.

"Decide we must, before act we do."

Mace glanced down to where Yoda was standing on a hover cart that allowed him to look in. He was right of course. If they really wanted to ask the people to volunteer themselves and their children for testing, they would want something in return. For all the good the Jedi had done to those people and for all the very up front and personal contact the two groups had had with each other, almost none of the freed prisoners had ever seen a Jedi up close. Much of the initial mistrust had disappeared, but sentients being what they were, their prejudices were there, and it was hard for all species to let something like this go. Master Drallig had taken to holding training classes outside near the settlement when the weather allowed, and this was always well-attended by spectators. Even Master Yoda was holding Living Force classes where everyone could watch.

When the day's work was done, both groups mingled, something that would never have been possible on Coruscant, and yet it would be naïve to assume that parents who had grown up with stories and rumours about the Jedi to risk their children being taken, however much this would not be done against their wishes.

Besides, pushing the decision into the future wouldn't solve anything. They wouldn't actually come to a final verdict until Skywalker and Obi Wan had returned, but both had made their opinions on the matter at hand clear. All the Masters knew that were they still on Coruscant and slavishly following the Code as it stood, then Skywalker would leave the Order and take his family to he ends of the Universe before he would subject his wife to having to give up her children and any future ones they might have. He suspected that some in the Order suspected that Skywalker would seize the opportunity to try and dismantle the code completely, but he had publicly stated that he thought it best if the existing code was reformed.

If the Ruusan Reformation had been wrong to start with or a good idea whose time had come and gone didn't really matter, he'd said, and Mace had come to the conclusion that Skywalker was right, and that Yoda had been right when he'd said that an Order unable or unwilling to change with the times it existed in could not stand. Neither the Jedi or the former Senator he was married to knew, but it was an unspoken agreement that their marriage would be officially sanctioned, and that there would be no further repercussions. It amounted to rewarding Anakin for having breached the code, but he had done so much for the Order, not the least he had saved all their lives by exposing the Chancellor for the Sith Lord he was.

That left the rest of them though..

"A mistake it was, to forbid them contact with their families. Served us well, the Ruusan Reformation it has, but too isolated from the people we were."

Mace sighed. "Looking back at it now... you are right. But the issue of divided loyalties remains. What is to stop the Empire from using a Jedi's family against him?"

Tiin spoke what most of them seemed to think. "Master Windu, this has always been the case, if not under these particular circumstances. Time and again we have seen attempts by our enemies to use a Padawan against his master or vice versa. Why should this be any different. And wasn't it Skywalker who said the other day that his attachment is not a weakness but a strength? That it gives him even more to fight for? I must admit, I was not among those very supportive of him, but I have watched him since the Exodus, and I must say he is closer to the so-called model Jedi than he has ever been since I've known him."

That much all of them knew. It was an unspoken truth that Skywalker had changed a lot. Fatherhood had made him grow up in a sense. He was still Anakin Skywalker, he was still rash, impatient and had a very unique sense of humour.

But he also was a doting father, a reliable Jedi, he was a surprisingly good role model for the Younglings, they regarded each other with very much mutual adoration and unlike the old Skywalker he was very much aware of his limits. No one but Mace knew this, but he had privately expressed his doubts that he would have the necessary detachment needed to train the twins once they were old enough. He had been honest about everything that he had kept from the council, including that unfortunate episode on Tatooine where he had once more all but requested that they dismiss him for it. It had caused quite a stir among the Council, but Skywalker's remorse and self-doubt, coupled with the likelihood that this too had been one of Palpatine's machinations had helped them resolve it after a long and difficult journey.

At the same time it didn't mean that he had turned into perfection. He still had no compunctions about telling off the Council when he believed they were wrong, and it was obvious to everyone that he would continue to fight for Ahoska Tano until the matter was resolved to _his_ satisfaction and not theirs.

"I agree." Mace said and turned back to the window. In the last months he had done a lot of soul searching and he come to the conclusion that he owed Skywalker, all of them, and Tano an apology. He may have had acted correctly in expressing his doubts at the time when Skywalker had first been brought to them, but his continued disapproval had helped push him towards Sidious. The other the Jedi owed an immeasurable debt of gratitude was Obi Wan Kenobi, because it had been him who had given Skywalker that extra shred of confidence and trust when needed. Between them those two had single-handedly saved the Jedi Order.

"The mistake we made," he said, "was that we assumed that repressing certain emotions, shoving them away... It may have been the correct thing to do once, but we continued with it even when it all had outlived it's usefulness. We were too set in our ways to see the will of the Force, and that helped everything up to the Exodus to come to pass. Consider, if you will, this possibility. If we had exposed and disposed of Sidious before he became Chancellor or at some point before he became too powerful to oust by legal means, and Skywalker had still married the Senator, and then she had become pregnant as it happened, we can assume that we would not be so open to amending our ways. Even if we hadn't known that he was the father, the moment we would have broached taking Luke and Leia Skywalker in for training, he and they would have disappeared into the void of the Galaxy."

Tiin nodded thoughtfully. "Indeed. How many parents have hidden their younglings from us because they feared we might take them against their will? What's more, how many lives and families have we ruined?"

They all considered this. Yoda especially. It was common knowledge that many sentient relationships could not survive the loss of a youngling, and how many had done so even though the parents knew that their offspring was alive, simply because they also know they would never see it again? To all the Jedi Masters present it seemed that in their haste to do what was best for the younglings they had completely dismissed what was best for the rest of the Galaxy and helped cement their own separation and distance from those that lived in it. After the Ruusan Reformation the Order had deliberately done so in an effort to.. what exactly? At the time retreating from involvement in the Galaxy seemed to have been the right thing to do, and since he had met and talked to some of the last pre-reformation Jedi in the Order during his youth, Yoda had long ago admitted to himself that it had been taken too far.

He could remember most of this only dimly, it had been almost nine centuries after all, but he had spent many an hour pouring over their Holocrons and other documents that had been saved during the Exodus, and he had come to a conclusion.

"Too fearful of the future we have been, and change, that must. Yet to the past we must look to go forward."

"What do you mean?" Mace asked.

"Inspiration we take from the past for the future."

"Are you suggesting we dismiss the Reformation completely?"

"I do not. Guidance we may seek from the past, yes. Rule our decisions, it must not. Reasons there were for change, reasons there are now. All the old ways are bad, you think, yes?"

Mace shook his head. "No."

He sighed, letting the last of his irrational feelings against necessary, vital change flow away into the Force. "Not any more, Master."

Yoda nodded sagely. "Difficult it is, to let go of all we have known for our entire lives. But possible it is in both directions. Shown us this, young Skywalker has. Shown us this the other young Skywalkers have. Their abilities and training, impaired it has not."

That much was true. Luke and Leia had begun attending the basic youngling training with the others, and the only difference between them and the pre-Exodus younglings anyone could see was that they returned to their parent's quarters each evening. Already it was blindingly obvious to anyone who looked at them how they took after their parents. While Luke was more like his mother in demeanour, and Leia had clearly inherited much of her father's 'unusual' personality, they both possessed the undeniable charm that had been gifted to them by both their parents.

They were every bit as strong in the Force as their father was and would one day make great Jedi. They would be the first of the next generation of Jedi, those that would lead the Order into a future so unlike anything what the present council had experienced. What was more, and what Yoda had kept to himself for the moment was that he had seen a vision that told him that it would be the same for their own children and untold generations of their families to follow. The Skywalkers and their descendants would be great servants of the Force indeed.

If he had to discuss this with anyone, it would be their parents, though at present none of them was near.

"No longer forbidden, romantic attachment should be. Other forms there are, forbidden those should remain."

It went unsaid that this would have the welcome side effect of eventually producing more Jedi.

The others made the appropriate noises of agreement.

"We should discuss this in a more formal setting, when everyone concerned is present."

Mace saw that the others agreed with him, and so the informal, impromptu meeting dissolved as they each went back to their various duties. As he gave the smallest of the Jedi one last look, he wondered if it might be a good idea to ask if Senator Skywalker wanted to be present when this was formally discussed.

Yoda lingered for a moment. "Another thing there is for you to do."

Mace sighed. "I know."

* * *

><p>Padmé was in a meeting with the Committee, so she had asked Ahsoka to have an eye on them while they played with the rest of the younglings and some of the non-Jedi children a few hundred metres up the river near where it fell into the ravine over a beautiful waterfall. The later afternoon turned into evening and the various parents and children began to drift back to the dwellings that now lined as-yet unpaved dirt roads that were supposed to be covered by the standard cheap road pavement colony worlds had been using since the dawn of the Old Republic, as soon as some could be stolen or bought. The three weeks since the landing has been busy, and there would be more in the future. Since this settlement was likely to be a permanent one, there were grandiose plans and some that where not as much. For instance, a sewage system was planned, as was a power generator hidden away in the bedrock and buried against observation, something that Anakin had suggested.<p>

But she didn't really think about that. She was far too busy tending to the twins. They had finally learned not to pull on her montrals, so she was glad to give them a ride on her shoulders, even though when one of them was there, the other complained. At the moment though Luke was busying himself with one of the musical toys Anakin had brought back for them from the last raid, and Leia was her usual self, looking out at the world from Ahsoka's shoulders with her usual curiosity.

Padmé met them half-way up. When she had given the twins back into their mother's care, she sighed. "Still no news?"

"Afraid not." the older woman said and shook her head. "But this wouldn't be the first time they didn't call in."

"Doesn't stop you from worrying though, does it, Padmé?"

"I wish it would. Still," the former Senator said with a smile at her friend, "they aren't overdue yet. Besides, I knew if he was... in danger."

Ahsoka was fascinated by the bond Padmé shared with her husband. It wasn't like the one she herself had with him since Padmé was not a force user, her count was substantially below the minimum threshold, but the way Anakin broadcast his Force presence to her was probably unique, but then, there wasn't much institutional knowledge about this sort of thing, at least not in the holocrons.

She glanced over to where the air-capable ships were parked, willing the battered freighter to return for her friend's sake.

"Master Windu!"

As if hit by a lightning bolt, Ahsoka turned at those words. True enough, the dark-skinned Jedi Master had walked up to them and respectfully waited. "Senator, Commander Tano." he said for a greeting.

Ahsoka looked at her feet and didn't reply, but Padmé did. "Can we do anything for you?"

"I would like to talk to the Commander here, if I may?"

Padmé saw that it was something important, so she made her excuses and took her children to the cafeteria.

Ahsoka dearly wished the ground would open up and swallow her whole. Since the Exodus she'd done her level best to avoid Windu, but it seemed the confrontation she'd been trying to avoid was at hand. What Windu said next took her her completely, utterly by surprise.

"I owe you an apology. It is inexcusable how you were treated after the Temple bombing, and I fully understand that those events were largely my fault. I made it worse when I dismissed it as part of your trials. It cost me... self respect, I know that now. As well as the services of a Padawan who has turned out to be an excellent, powerful Jedi and never given is the least reason to doubt her. We dismissed her commitment to the Force, a very, grave mistake. For that I am sorry, Commander."

She was glad that no one was close enough to hear, or to see how she stood there with a flabbergasted expression and her chin probably hanging somewhere near her navel. As much as she had wanted, needed to hear those words, it was surprising they came so easily and, she sensed it clearly, with so much _sincerity_. It was next to impossible to lie to a Jedi. Thankfully, Windu cleary sensed her discomfort and just continued.

He lowered his head. "Much of what was done to you is my fault, and mine alone. It was I who pushed for the Council to see it as a part of your trials. That was wrong, and I apologize again. On my behalf and on that of the Order as a whole."

Ahsoka had no idea what to say, so she said nothing and merely stared at Windu. She knew he was sincere, that he meant every word he said and that he felt genuine remorse. What he said was what the Order wanted to be said. The part of her that had made her remain with the Remnant even though she hadn't had any formal obligation to do so, the part that still wanted acceptance from the Jedi leaped to that, knowing what was coming next.

Yet the cynical part of her that was still hurt and that had made her leave in the first place tried to keep her from truly accepting the words. She was sure that Windu sensed how broken and conflicted she was and his next words confirmed it.

"If you wish it, I will repeat those words in front of the Council, in front of Knight Skywalker if you want to, but know this: Our arms are always open to you. If you wish to return to the Order, as a full Jedi Knight, then you only need to say so, because you have more than proven that you deserve that rank."

Instead of walking away like she had wanted him to, Windu remained. Clearly he was expecting some sort of answer, but what she'd just heard was so unexpected that she had trouble thinking coherently, never mind speaking aloud.

Her cynical side told her to reject the officer, but she knew that she really, really wanted to accept it. Windu had given her the one thing she wanted. And yet, the pain that had been inflicted on her kept her from accepting on the spot. Though it wasn't the same Order that had rejected her. Beyond the current circumstances, the sheer fact that Windu, the one who had been most dismissive about her and her Master, stood here and honestly regretted what he had done.. She searched her feelings and knew it to be true. She thought of the trust Master Ti had put in her even when Ahsoka had been torn by doubts during the Exodus, and as much as she wished she could ask for Skyguy's advice, a sense of serenity settled over her.

"Master Windu..." she said with a small and hesitant but very genuine smile, "I... will accept that offer. But I have a few things to say first."

Windu nodded.

"If you'd asked me just after the Exodus, I would have refused. Now.. the Order has changed as much as leaving it has changed me, and I think that it was for the better. I will be honoured to help rebuild the Order and to fight by my fellow Jedis' side." She bowed respectfully.

* * *

><p>Anakin and Obi Wan returned two days later, and he was ecstatic when told the news. Normally Knighting was conducted by the High Council and them alone, but it had always been so that the ceremony was adapted for circumstances.<p>

Ahsoka slowly walked into the Council Chamber as she had been directed, not really knowing what to expect. The Knighting Ceremony had always been a topic of discussion among younglings and Padawans, though during her time outside the Order, Ahsoka hadn't really thought about it. Because of all this she didn't really know what to expect, as the study of the higher ceremonies of the Order would have happened during her last year at Anakin's side. She had been aware though that Anakin hadn't known he was about to be knighted until he had met Obi Wan in front of the chamber, who had promptly scolded him for being late.

Obi Wan had only smiled sadly when being told that the reason Anakin had been late was a certain Senator and then said to Ahsoka that he was glad the one thing Anakin hadn't taught her was his sense of punctuality.

The Chamber was pitch dark, but she could hear Anakin's footsteps as he joined the others. When she reached the centre of the half-circle, five lightsabres were activated, providing a shadowy half-light. The Jedi High Council with the addition of her old Master saluted her with their weapons. Like herself, they had dressed in classic Jedi robes for the occasion.

"Step forward." Yoda said.

Ahsoka crossed the few steps, pulled down her cape and went down on one knee in front of the Grand Master, handing him her own sabre.

Yoda ignited it and welcomed those present.

"Jedi we all are. Through us, the Force speaks. Proclaim itself and what is real, the Force does through our actions. Here we are today, to acknowledge what proclaimed, the Force has."

He brought Ahsoka's sabre down over her left shoulder. Had she been growing a Padawan braid, it would have been cut at this point. Instead he placed it over her other shoulder.

"By the right of the Council, by the will of the Force, dub thee I do, Jedi, Knight of the Republic."

He shut off her sabre and held it out. Ahsoka got to her feet, picked up her weapon and left the chamber without another word.

**tbc**

** Comments fuel me.**

**The details about Anakin's knighting are taken from the 2003 Clone Wars 2D Cartoon. Since I do not own the book that details the ceremony itself, I kept it vague except where I felt a few changes to adapt to the circumstances were appropriate.**


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